by Vince Flynn
The van began to move and Zhutov adjusted his trajectory to cut across its rear. When he did, the driver slammed on the brakes, fishtailing on the slick cobbles. The back doors were thrown open and he stumbled to the right, barely avoiding being hit by one.
Despite extensive training in his youth, Zhutov froze. He found himself unable to resist as a man leapt out of the vehicle and grabbed him by the front of his suit jacket. The Russian was nearly lifted from the ground as he was driven into the vehicle’s cramped cargo space. Somewhere in the distance, he heard the wet squeal of tires, but the sound seemed to disappear when he looked into the dark eyes of the man preparing to close the doors from his position on the street.
“No!” Zhutov shouted before he could be closed off from the outside world. His heart rate, already elevated from adrenaline and his evening workout, shot up again when he managed to put a name to the face. “Stop! I haven’t betrayed you! I swear I haven’t!”
He tried to fight into a sitting position but someone behind him grabbed his shoulders and held him down. Zhutov looked up at the disarming grin and neatly trimmed blond hair of Scott Coleman. “Relax, Vasily. We’re the good guys.”
“Go!” Rapp shouted, slamming the doors. He was sprayed with water as Maslick gunned the van’s anemic engine and drifted it onto a winding street leading north. The safe house was less than three miles away and Coleman’s team would hole up there for a few days to debrief Zhutov and build him a new identity.
A more pressing problem was the similar van barreling down on Rapp from the other side of the square. Behind him, there was a narrow walkway between two buildings. It would be an easy getaway since he wasn’t aware of a single Russian operative who could even come close to keeping up with him on foot. It would also leave a lot of questions unanswered.
Too many, Rapp decided. Kennedy would just have to deal with the fallout.
He slipped his Glock 19 from beneath his jacket and sighted over the silencer toward the van now just over twenty yards away. The windshield wipers were running at full speed, giving him a clear view of the two men in the front seat. He aimed at the driver and squeezed off a round. The Winchester Ranger Bonded wasn’t his normal go-to ammunition, but it was ideal for this scenario. Subsonic to eliminate the crack caused by the round breaking the sound barrier but with excellent penetration capability.
A spiderwebbed hole opened directly in front of the driver’s face, but the bullet didn’t find its mark. It wasn’t entirely unexpected. The deflection of even a hard-hitting bullet could be significant. In his career he’d experienced everything from shots that went straight through to the target, to one that had veered so violently it had sheared off a side-view mirror.
The van swerved as the driver instinctively raised his hands to protect his face from the tiny shards of glass. Rapp fired a second shot at the damage made by the first. The softened glass reduced deflection and a spray of blood erupted when the driver’s forehead was torn away.
The vehicle slowed as the man’s foot went limp and Rapp moved left, bringing the side door into view. These tended to be three-man operations and that suggested the last team member was out of view in the cargo section. It was a prediction that was proved right when the door slid open and a bulky man with an unsuppressed Russian 9A-91 assault rifle started to leap out. Rapp blew the back of his skull off and watched as he pitched forward into the street. One of his feet got tangled in a seat belt and he was dragged along, leaving a broad streak of blood and brain matter on the wet cobblestones.
The surviving man in the passenger seat grabbed the wheel and turned the vehicle toward Rapp, desperately trying to get his foot past his dead companion’s leg in order to slam the accelerator to the floor. It was a vaguely pathetic sight, and Rapp just stood there as the van rolled to a stop a few feet in front of him.
“Get out!” he yelled as the Russian stared at him wide-eyed and raised his hands.
He did as ordered and Rapp indicated toward the corpse hanging halfway out the door. “Put him inside.”
The dead weight looked significant but the Russian managed. The square and the windows of the buildings around them were still empty, but it wouldn’t last. One local with a cell phone was all it would take to bring the police down on them.
“You’re driving,” Rapp said, keeping his weapon lined up on the man as he dragged what was left of the original driver into the cargo area. Rapp climbed into the passenger seat and pulled the door closed, pressing the tip of his silencer into the man’s ribs.
“Go. Nice and easy. No need to attract attention.”
The Russian seemed reluctant to lean back into the blood-soaked headrest and instead hunched over the wheel as he steered the car past an empty playground.
“What’s your name?” Rapp said.
“Vadim Yenotin.”
“Do you know who I am?”
The man swallowed and nodded.
“Then you understand your situation.”
“Yes.”
They turned onto a broader avenue and were immediately surrounded by the glare of headlights.
“You have two options, Vadim. The first is that I take you to a safe house with a soundproof basement. Things get ugly and you tell me everything you know.”
“I do not like this plan.” His accent was thick but understandable.
“You’re smarter than you look. Good. Option two is for you to answer all my questions completely and truthfully. After that, my boss calls your boss and they do a little horse-trading. You know the drill—we give up a little information and maybe pad a few of your superiors’ retirement accounts. A week later, you’re sitting in your apartment drinking vodka.”
“Yes. I like this very much. This is what should be done.”
“Why were you sent to pick Zhutov up?”
“The FSB received an email saying that he was being paid by the Americans.”
“Who was it from?”
“Joseph Rickman.”
“And you just believed it?”
“There was a great deal of information. The names of his handlers, information he’d passed to the CIA, dates, places. It said that he is the Sitting Bull that Rickman spoke of on the video.”
“When did you get the email?”
“Five days ago.”
Rapp pulled his gun from the man’s ribs and jammed it into his crotch. “I thought you weren’t going to lie to me, Vadim. Option one is now back on the table.”
“No! I was informed five days ago. I saw the email myself. Our people checked the servers to confirm the date and to try to find where it came from. I swear!”
“Pull over on the next side street and park, Vadim. I don’t want you to run over anyone when I blow your nuts off.”
“I have no reason to lie to you about this! We arrived four days ago and began watching Zhutov to see if he would lead us to any of his contacts. We flew in on a commercial airliner and went through passport control. I can give you the names we used.”
“Joe Rickman died two weeks ago, Vadim. So unless he’s figured out a way to stuff his brain back into his skull, you have a serious problem.”
“Impossible! Please. Check my story. The CIA can do this easily. You will find that I am telling the truth.”
Rapp kept the silencer pressed into the man’s crotch, but his desire to pull the trigger began to wane. He had a nose for lies and the overwhelming impression he was getting from Yenotin was that he was very fond of his testicles. The Russian wasn’t one of the fanatics Rapp had spent his career dealing with. He wasn’t looking to get his fingernails pulled in an effort to please Allah. He was a professional who understood the zero-sum game played by world powers.
“You said your people tried to determine where the email came from. What did they learn?”
“Nothing. It traveled all over the world. There was no way to trace its source.”
Rapp let out a long breath and indicated for the man to turn right at the next intersection. Things had j
ust gone from complete crap to insurmountable disaster.
CHAPTER 5
LAHORE
PAKISTAN
THE Land Cruiser’s front wheels dropped into a muddy ditch, and Ahmed Taj heard the whine of the engine as his driver gunned the vehicle toward the low bank on the other side.
Taj didn’t bother to look outside. He’d grown up surrounded by such places, and little had changed over the years. Unmaintained dirt roads still threaded haphazardly through tent cities and mud brick huts. The clear sky was still obscured by smoke from cooking fires. The only anomaly was the absence of people. Normally, the area would be filled with children not yet bowed by their circumstances and adults trying desperately to find a way to fill their bellies. On this day, his security detail had coordinated with the local Islamic militias to clear his entry and exit routes.
The SUV he was in was painted white and emblazoned with the logo of one of the aid agencies active in the area, allowing for a certain amount of anonymity despite being the only vehicle on the street. He glanced upward through the moon roof and saw nothing. It was an illusion, though. The Americans were ever present, watching with satellites, drones, and co-opted security cameras. Their mastery of technology was their greatest strength. But their utter reliance on it was, ironically, their greatest weakness.
Areas like these had been slowly taken over by various radical groups with the help of Akhtar Durrani and his notorious S Wing.
The task of relocating these groups from the rural areas to the cities had been as critical as it was monumental. Here, mixed into the general population, even the most surgical drone strike would generate substantial collateral damage. The Americans were uncomfortable with civilian casualties and absolutely abhorred photographs of the blackened bodies of women and children.
It was all part of the bizarre web of lies and hidden agendas created by his country’s long relationship with the United States. Many of the politicians in Washington believed that the quagmire in Afghanistan had been caused by the U.S. abandoning the region after the Soviets fled. It was a naïve and arrogant view—an example of how the Americans saw the world as revolving entirely around their fleeting experiment with democracy. Afghanistan had simply reverted back to what it had been for a thousand years. An inevitable and easily predicted outcome.
The money originally earmarked for the mujahideen, though, continued to flow. In the last year alone, the United States had supplied almost $5 billion in aid to Pakistan, most of which had been quietly absorbed by the military and ISI. In fact, the army was now the country’s largest holder of commercial real estate, owning condominium complexes, shopping malls, and office buildings throughout the world. Pakistan’s generals were some of the wealthiest men in the country.
While the situation was hopelessly complicated, its fundamentals were simple: Pakistan’s military-industrial complex and intelligence apparatus had become addicted to American dollars. The only real threat to that massive source of funding was the eradication of terrorism in the region. This left the ISI in the twisted but wildly profitable business of publicly fighting the terrorist threat to America while privately supporting it.
It was a situation that had to be handled with the utmost care. Enough fires had to be ignited to keep the Americans chasing after them, but no single fire could burn so brightly that it garnered too much attention. Unfortunately, that line had been recently crossed.
Durrani had pressed Afghan general Abdul Qayem to set up an assassination attempt on Mitch Rapp. It had been a largely foolish enterprise, turning entirely on successfully killing a man who had proved countless times to be immune to such actions. Now Rapp was leaving no stone unturned in his search for Qayem, including pressing into service Abdul Zahir, who was as shrewd as he was loathsome.
Arrogance was a trap that had killed countless powerful men, and it was one that Taj had promised himself he would never fall into. Mitch Rapp was not someone to be trifled with. Only a fool would refuse to acknowledge that he usually got what he wanted. And what he wanted was to hunt down and butcher his enemies.
Local militia began appearing on the street—dirty men with Kalashnikovs and faces obscured by scarves. They watched his vehicle pass but made no move to block its progress. The Land Cruiser threaded through a narrow gap in a mud wall and stopped on the other side. Taj stepped out, looking down to hide his face from potential surveillance drones. The stone hovel was only a few meters away, and he covered the ground quickly, passing through a door that had been cobbled together from materials scrounged from a landfill.
Inside, the heat and stench of excrement condensed into a humid fog. The single room was empty and he crossed to the back of it, descending a set of rickety stairs to a basement carved from the earth. It was, in fact, one of the many entrances to an elaborate maze of fetid tunnels designed to obscure the movements of the insurgents inhabiting the area.
Near the base of the stairs was a lone man, naked except for a black canvas hood secured around his neck. His hands and feet were wired to the chair he was in and his head moved with birdlike jerks as he tried to track the movement his ears had picked up.
Taj stopped in front of the man, letting his gaze sweep from the stomach resting on thighs thick with hair, to a tray arranged with knives, pliers, and a single propane-fueled torch.
“Ahmed!”
Taj turned toward the figure of General Qayem as he emerged from a tunnel beneath the stairs.
“Abdul. It brings me joy to see you.”
They embraced, and when Taj pulled away he pointed to the naked man in the chair. “You found him.”
“He’s a clever little cockroach,” Qayem said. “He has many rocks to hide beneath, but his main tool is fear. Fortunately, some of his men are more afraid of me than they are of him.”
He pulled the hood off and Taj looked into the terrified eyes of Abdul Zahir. His hair and beard were shoe-polish black, contrasting the gray streaks of his body hair. It was the custom of Afghan men to try to look younger than they were in a country where age was often seen as a sign of weakness.
“Are you pleased?” Qayem asked.
It was hardly the right word. He was angry about Qayem’s attack on Rapp, but it was impossible to blame the man. He was an old and loyal friend who had only been following Akhtar Durrani’s orders. The great lengths the ISI went to in order to ensure unquestioning loyalty could at times have drawbacks. Qayem would have never even considered questioning the orders of the deputy general of ISI’s external wing.
“Please,” Zahir said through chapped, swollen lips but then seemed to lose his train of thought. “Please . . .”
“And what would you have me do for you?” Taj said. “You are a pig who believes in nothing. Who serves neither God nor his people. Who allies himself with whoever pays the most.”
“It’s not true!” he said, the lack of force in his voice suggesting that even he recognized the absurdity of the denial.
“You were never of any importance, Zahir. I would have been content for you to just die of old age, surrounded by the things your treachery allowed you to acquire. But then you allied yourself with Mitch Rapp.”
“Malik al-Mawt? No! That’s a lie!” Zahir said. Malik al-Mawt roughly translated to the angel of death, a moniker that the Afghans had given Rapp years ago.
“I believe you know him as Mr. Harry.”
Zahir’s eyes widened. “It can’t be. I . . . I didn’t know.”
Taj could tolerate liars, but there was nothing that disgusted him more than a coward. By all reports, Zahir had tried to insert himself into the investigation of Rickman’s kidnapping thinking it was being run by the CIA’s pathetic station chief, Darren Sickles. Instead of the bowing and scraping he’d become accustomed to, though, he’d found Rapp’s pistol pressed to his forehead. Ever since, the man had been tracking Qayem in hopes of saving his own pathetic life.
“I am deeply sorry about Rapp,” Qayem said. “It was my failure and my responsibility.”
“No, old friend. This was Durrani’s failure. And he’s paid for his incompetence.”
In fact, it was likely that Durrani had died at the end of Rapp’s infamous Glock. Taj had extensive audio surveillance set up at Durrani’s house, but cameras had been impractical. This left him with only a general description of Kassar’s accomplice in the killing of Durrani and Rickman. Digital recordings of the man’s voice had confirmed an American accent but they were of insufficient quality for comparative voice printing.
It was this uncertainty that had left him no choice but to tell Irene Kennedy far more than he’d wanted. There was no way to know what Kennedy had learned or what she suspected. He couldn’t afford to be caught in a lie. She was a clever bitch and he needed to build trust between them—to blind her until it was too late.
“Please,” he heard Zahir say behind him. “You have to believe me. If I had known who he was, I would have never helped him. I would have—”
“Silence!” Taj screamed, spinning and running at the man. He snatched a meat cleaver from the tray and swung it down onto Zahir’s wrist where it was secured to the arm of the chair.
The hand remained wired where it was, but Zahir’s arm was suddenly free. He screamed like a woman as he drew back the stump, spraying blood across Taj’s white polo shirt.
The ISI director retreated out of range and Qayem snatched a piece of wood from the dirt floor, swinging it full force into the side of the wailing man’s head. Silence once again descended on the cramped underground chamber. Only Qayem’s elevated breathing and the sound of Zahir’s life leaking from him intruded.
“Rapp is coming for you, my friend,” Taj said. “I have a man inside his organization who I believe will be able to eliminate him, but our ability to communicate is limited. Once again, we find time working against us.”
Qayem was smart enough to understand that he would eventually be found and humble enough to know that he would eventually break. No one could resist what the CIA man would unleash.
