by Vince Flynn
They all turned, a bit shocked, and looked at the linebacker of a man, who was known for his quiet demeanor. “What exactly do you mean?” Lewis asked.
“What if we get him to take ownership?” Maslick asked in a soft voice. “Get him to help us out.” Looking directly at Hurley, he said, “Like flipping a foreign agent. You’ve said so yourself many times, Stan. All you need is a little money, a little time, and a cause worth fighting for.”
CHAPTER 15
IF the words had come from anyone else, Rapp felt confident that they would have elicited a rather strong response from Hurley, but they’d come from the gentle giant, so the old spymaster stood there and quietly chewed on them. Rapp took the time to figure out his next move. As he did so, he saw the tension leave the old man, and it occurred to him there was a heavy emotional toll attached to this untidy situation. No matter how tough he was, there was no accounting for the burden of almost killing your best friend’s son, a boy you had cradled in your arms as an infant and bounced on your knee as a toddler.
Hurley hobbled over to the closest desk and sat on the edge. Rapp looked at Lewis, who was watching the old man with legitimate concern. Thinking the silence was only making things worse, Rapp said, “Stan, this could work. You may have just scared him straight.”
“That is a valid point,” Lewis added. “He expected you to save him from Mitch . . . not the other way around. And that was a pretty close call. I doubt you could have faked it any better.”
“I wanna go back in there and throw him a life line,” Rapp said. “Doc?”
Lewis shrugged. “You know the routine. To start, don’t ask him anything you don’t already know the answer to.”
“And don’t try to turn him,” Hurley offered in a detached voice. He’d swiveled the monitor on the desk around so he could look at Adams. Faint sobs could be heard on the small desktop speakers. “That comes later. After he’s proven he really wants it. Go ahead and hold out a glimmer of hope, but that’s it.”
“Understood.” Rapp nodded. He grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and a bottle of vodka and a glass. “Buzz me if anything comes to mind.”
Rapp knew all he had was twenty minutes, but he was probably never going to get another shot at Adams when he’d be this fragile. Rapp punched in the code and opened the door. There Adams sat, with his crimson forehead peppered with a hundred little droplets of blood from the muzzle blast, his eyes closed and his chin down. His pants were damp and there was a puddle of urine at his feet. Hurley was right about one thing—this was a nasty business, and it was easy to lose your nerve if you didn’t operate under tight constraints. Put a bullet in a guy’s head, dispose of the body, and move on. No sense slowing down to peruse the carnage, and don’t bother to look in the rearview mirror either. You start doing stuff like that and you’re inviting trouble.
Even so, Rapp saw an opportunity. It wouldn’t be long before people began to wonder where Adams had gone. The office didn’t expect him back until this afternoon, and unless they’d missed something, he had no breakfast meetings in New York. His staff would probably start to get nervous around midafternoon. They’d try his cell phone and get nothing. Then they’d try the house, and if they got hold of his wife she’d tell them she had not spoken to him and, while that might be strange for some couples, it was not strange for them. The staff would alert the appropriate people at Langley, who would more than likely sit on it overnight. But if he didn’t show up for work the next morning, the feds would be brought in, and not long after that they would discover he had left the country. Rapp had no illusions that he could roll Adams and have him back at the office by tomorrow morning. That simply was not going to happen. But there was another option—one that would buy them more than enough time.
With one hand Rapp dragged the table back over and placed it in front of Adams. He set the water bottle, vodka, and glass down on the table and then withdrew a small tactical knife from his belt. He then walked behind Adams, cut the flex ties from his wrists, and said, “I think you probably need a drink.”
Rapp circled back around the room and stood facing Adams. He wanted to have a good view of what would happen next. Adams slowly lifted his head and looked at the objects sitting on the table. He hesitated and then reached out. His right hand went straight for the bottle of vodka, which Rapp had expected.
Adams clutched the bottle and spun the silver cap off, not caring that it fell to the floor. With a shaky hand he clanged the neck of the bottle against the rim of the glass and let the clear alcohol come splashing out, a good portion missing the glass. Adams set the bottle down and drew the glass to his lips, downing about three ounces of vodka in two gulps. For a moment he looked as if he was going to pour another glass, but instead he started to shake uncontrollably, and then he was sobbing again, his head on the table, cradled in his arms.
Rapp could only make out every fifth word or so. It was a complete meltdown. He’d seen it before and knew there was no stopping it, short of smacking him, but that would be a mistake. The die had been cast five minutes earlier, and Rapp was now going to have to play the good cop. After a few minutes the sobs softened and the breathing stabilized. Eventually Adams looked up at him with pleading eyes and spoke.
“Why?”
It was a pretty open-ended question, so Rapp said nothing. He just stood there and stared back at Adams’s puffy, bloodshot eyes. The guy was a mess.
“I don’t understand,” Adams sniffled. “I’ve lived an honorable life. I don’t deserve this.”
Rapp wanted to refute the comment, but managed to stop himself. Playing good cop didn’t come easy to him. His instinct was to smack the fool across the head a few times and make it really clear if he didn’t do everything he was told, he’d get Hurley back in the room and have him finish the job. Instead, he sighed and said, “Glen, a lot of people have lost their bearings during this mess.”
“Not me.”
“I know you think you’ve done the right thing,” Rapp said carefully, “but you haven’t. You’ve been suckered into this partisan game that everyone wants to play in Washington. Republican versus Democrat . . . liberal versus conservative . . . none of that matters. At Langley, the only thing we’re supposed to concern ourselves with is national security. That’s our mission, and the day the ACLU starts driving our national security policy is the day America is really fucked.”
“But you guys don’t see what you’re doing,” Adams pleaded. “We are becoming the very monsters we are trying to defeat.”
Rapp had heard this bullshit line too many times. “Give me one example.”
Adams held out his hands and looked around the room. “What would you call this?”
Rapp laughed and said, “If you worked for al Qaeda, and they caught you divulging their secrets to the media, they wouldn’t simply kill you, they’d kill your wife and kids and make you watch, and then if you were lucky they would put you out of your misery quickly, but they probably wouldn’t. They’d toy with you for months and use you as an example to anyone else who was less than resolute in his faith.”
“We’re not them. I was left with no other options. I couldn’t just sit there and watch you guys operate with such reckless disregard for the law.”
“Really.” Rapp looked at the door again. “Maybe I made a mistake.”
“You’re damn right you did. You should have never brought me here.” Adams grabbed the bottle of vodka.
“I’m talking about stopping him from blowing your head all over that wall.”
Adams looked up while he was pouring another drink. “I am not the enemy.”
“Actually you are, Glen, and if you can’t see that you’ve fucked up, there’s no hope of saving you. Stan would just as soon tear your head off and piss down your throat. He despises you. He sees you as the bright shining example of how the baby boomers have fucked up this country.”
“That’s a good one,” Adams sneered, “coming from the most racist, bigoted generation
this country has ever seen.” He took another drink.
“You can bring it up with Stan.” Rapp checked his watch. “I have to get back to Langley for a meeting.” He took a step toward the door and stopped. “I thought you might be worth saving, but I guess I was wrong.”
“Wait!” Adams said desperately. “You can’t leave me here with him.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because he’ll kill me!” Adams yelled.
“And how would that affect me?”
“It would.” Adams’s eyes darted around the room as his brain tried to come up with something. “It would make you an accessory to murder.”
“You’re kidding, right? That’s the best you can come up with?”
“I have powerful allies,” Adams warned.
Rapp rubbed his forehead and decided to write off the man’s lame excuses to the vodka. “Glen, I don’t think you’re a bad person. I just think you’re confused. You’ve gotten yourself wrapped up in the legal aspect of this. You’re focused on 2 percent of the issue and you’re ignoring the other 98 percent. You’ve lost all sense of proportion, and if you can’t open your eyes to that, there is nothing I can do to help you.”
“I have done nothing wrong.”
“Last chance, Glen. I’m going to walk out this door and Stan’s going to come back in here and blow your head off. Then they’ll cut you up into six pieces and incinerate you limb by limb. By lunch the only sign that you ever existed will be a pile of ash that’ll fit into a coffee can. By dinner that ash will be spread far and wide. All evidence destroyed. The only thing the feds will have to go on is the fact that you left the country . . . that and the fact that you’re a drunk. They’ll look for a few weeks and then they’ll write your ass off.”
Adams shook his head defiantly. “They will know something is wrong and they won’t stop until they get to the bottom of it.”
Rapp shrugged as if he’d given it his best shot. “I wish I could say it was nice knowing you, Glen, but I’d be lying. You’re a self-serving prick, and you won’t be missed . . . not even by your own family.” Rapp hit the intercom button. “I’m done in here. He’s all yours.”
CHAPTER 16
TOOLESBORO, IOWA
HAKIM learned to play chess when he was seven years old. His grandfather had taught him the game, and for the next six years until the kind old man died, they played every week. One of the first things his grandfather had taught him was that a chess match was often decided because of one bad move. A move that, once made, set the game on an almost certain path. And in chess, as in life, a move like that could never be taken back. So the moral of the story, according to his grandfather, was to think long and hard before deciding something difficult. Look at it from every angle. See what you see and then ask yourself if there’s something you can’t see.
Hakim didn’t know if it was all that chess, or a God-given abundance of common sense combined with an easy attitude, but whatever it was, he had been able to avoid a lot of trouble over the years by staying patient and making prudent decisions. The same could not be said for Karim. His daring, brash behavior had led him to great success on the battlefield in Afghanistan, and his plan to attack America, despite his own criticism, had been a huge success. In the more subtle arena of daily life, though, his ability to pick up on the moods and currents of a foreign land was almost nonexistent.
The gun came up and before Hakim could react it was fired. It was as if the entire thing painfully played out before him in slow motion. The father went down with a wound to the gut and the kid turned in panic and began to run. He made it three steps and then collapsed with a bullet to the lower back.
Karim lowered his weapon and turned to Hakim, “Now let’s find out why they were really here.” He walked down the porch steps and onto the gravel.
With the loud cracks of the 9mm pistol still echoing down the river valley, Hakim’s brain took off headlong in an attempt to assess the damage. In the first millisecond he knew it was bad. Extremely bad. He had had the situation under control and then Karim’s massive, paranoid ego led him to step in when there was so clearly no need for him to do so. It was as if all the frustrations of the last week came pouring out at once. He followed his friend down the steps and said, “I already know why they are here, you idiot.”
Karim spun to face his friend. “What did you just call me?”
“I called you an idiot! An unbelievable idiot!”
“You will show me the proper respect,” Karim commanded, “or you will be punished.”
“I’d like to see you try.” Hakim took a step toward his old friend and pushed his sleeves up. “Do you have any idea what you have done?”
An incredulous look on his face, Karim answered, “I stopped these two men from walking away and telling the authorities that we are here. I did what you should have done.”
“Should have done? You are an utter fool. You have ruined everything and for nothing. These two weren’t going to tell anyone anything other than what I told them. They were going to go hunt down by the river and leave us alone.” Hakim looked at the father and son. Both of them were writhing on the ground in pain. Now what the hell were they going to do with them? “They believed me, you arrogant ass.”
“You are the fool,” Karim spat back. “They only acted like they believed you. They are probably police.”
“You have never been to this country before. You have no idea how to read these people. They are not police.” Hakim motioned at the house, the barn, and the surrounding land. “Where are we to go?”
Karim was obviously irritated by the question. “Well . . . if they are hunters as you say, we will bury the bodies and be done with them.”
“And when they don’t make it home for dinner tonight, and the wife calls the police and tells them they were coming out here to hunt. What do we do then? Because the police will come and look for them.”
Karim saw that the boy had pulled a cell phone from his jacket and was trying to make a call. He raised his gun, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. The orange hat flew off the boy’s head in a puff of dust and his foot twitched a few times before he went completely still. Looking back at Hakim as if nothing had happened, he said, “Then we will have to leave.”
The father howled in agony and started to frantically crawl toward his son. Hakim was sickened by the entire scene. None of it had to happen. These two men had done nothing wrong. “I explained to you what would happen if we had to leave. I told you in detail that our best chance for survival was to stay here for at least a month. To wait them out. Then we would be able to slip out of the country.”
“I am sick of your complaining,” Karim announced. “I question your devotion.”
“And I question your devotion. You are a coward. No different than the rest of the lazy rich men who claim to lead us.”
Genuine anger flashed across Karim’s face. “How dare you question me?”
“I am not one of your brainwashed robots. I have known you for too long. If you were a real warrior you would have gone into that building with your men and martyred yourself. But you are too obsessed with your own fame. The Lion of al Qaeda . . . Ha!” Hakim spoke in reference to the name that Karim had given himself in the videos he released after the attacks. “You should be called the coward of al Qaeda.” He looked back to the father, who had reached his son and was sobbing uncontrollably.
Karim could not take another word. The insolence of his friend should have been checked a long time ago. “Prove to me that you are not a coward. Kill the father now. I order you.” Karim tossed his gun to his friend.
The gun sailed through the air, but Hakim made no effort to catch it. The gun landed at his feet and skidded a few inches along the gravel. Hakim looked down at the gun and shook his head. “There is no honor in this. No bravery in killing an unarmed father and son who have done nothing to offend you, or Allah.”
“I order you!”
“We are the infidels in this land. Th
is is wrong. If you want him dead, then you should finish what you started.”
“For the last time I order you to pick up the gun and shoot the father.”
“I don’t take orders from you,” Hakim said with a derisive scowl.
“Yes, you do.”
Hakim turned and started back for the house.
“Do not turn your back on me,” Karim yelled, but Hakim paid him no attention. Karim had finally had enough. He broke into a run and caught his friend just as he reached the steps. He delivered a quick rabbit punch to Hakim’s kidney and then kicked through the back of his right knee, collapsing him to the ground. Karim then grabbed him by the shirt, threw him onto his back, and dropped on top of him, delivering a flurry of punches to his friend’s face. “This,” he said in between his third and fourth punches, “is a lesson I should have taught you a long time ago.”
