by Vince Flynn
And then there was Pakistan.
As it stood, the ISI was so compartmentalized that one division could be tracking down a particular terrorist cell while another division supported it. Infighting was the norm, with people actively hamstringing operations in order to discredit their rivals and advance their own careers. The director tended to set broad goals, but the real power lay with the deputies who protected their fiefdoms like a pack of wild dogs.
This, among other things, had made the ISI’s antiterrorist efforts sporadic and often counterproductive. Problematic? Yes. Destructive to the region? Absolutely. A clear and present danger to the United States? Likely not.
The problem was that the ISI she had set up the CIA to handle was transforming at a pace she would have never thought possible. Nadeem Ashan, the eminently reasonable deputy general for analysis and foreign relations, was under house arrest. Akhtar Durrani, the violent but dull-witted head of the external wing, was dead. And Ahmed Taj had replaced both with men her analysts were unfamiliar with. The S Wing was evolving, too. At first, the CIA had seen the shrinking of the ISI’s clandestine division as a good sign. Now, though, it was clear that it was just shedding its weaker agents and stepping farther into the shadows.
She pulled up a photo of Ahmed Taj on her laptop, studying his dull, downturned eyes for a long time. He’d been chosen by Saad Chutani for his competence in logistics, moderate views, and lack of ambition. Beyond that, the CIA had uncovered little about the man. He’d grown up in a poor area of the country where written records were sparse and life expectancy was low enough that human intel about his childhood was little more than thirdhand innuendo. His father had been a pious and talented businessman who had provided Taj a life somewhat more privileged than those around him as well as a university education in America.
What hard data they possessed pointed to mediocrity in all areas of Taj’s life: his grades, his extracurricular activities, his military record. Ironically, it was this that had worried the CIA’s Pakistan experts most. Many had predicted the ISI fracturing even further with such a weak hand at the helm. And yet the opposite seemed to be true. Under the command of Taj and the ostensibly weak men he had recruited, the ISI seemed to be gaining the discipline it had always lacked.
She glanced at the report she’d been reading and closed the folder. It was yet another analysis of Taj’s ISI. More pages of the bizarre intellectual contortions necessary to explain Pakistan’s increasingly stable intelligence apparatus. The popular theory now was that it was being held together by the middle managers whom, a few years earlier, the same analysts were blaming for the organization’s Wild West culture.
Everything the CIA knew about the modern ISI had been learned by viewing the organization through the lens of Taj’s weakness. And every prediction that lens produced had proved wrong. What if their most basic assumptions about the man were inaccurate? What if they were seeing only what he wanted them to see?
She picked up the phone and dialed a number for the third time that day.
“Senator Ferris’s office.”
“Is he in? This is Irene Kennedy.”
“I’m sorry, Director Kennedy, he’s not available. I’ve given him your messages but he just returned from Pakistan and his schedule’s full. Do you want me to tell him you called again?”
“No. It’s not important,” she said, disconnecting the call.
Her sources said that Ferris and Taj had met privately during his fact-finding mission in Islamabad. She was very interested in what the two men discussed.
In the end, though, the influential senator’s refusal to return her calls was more instructive than any of the half-truths he’d tell about his meeting. She had always known that her threats against him were only a temporary fix. Like many of his colleagues, Ferris would gladly destroy the CIA, the country, and perhaps even himself before he would allow anyone to get in the way of his ambition.
He had already hired a battery of Ivy League lawyers with PAC money that was impossible for even her to trace. Now he was in talks with some of the country’s top political operatives. There could be little doubt that he was looking to turn the tables on her and continue his march toward his party’s presidential nomination.
Normally this would be of great concern, but in this case Rapp was right. In the context of the Rickman Affair, this bloated, ridiculous man seemed almost comical. What concerned her more than Ferris’s growing army of attorneys and spin doctors was his relationship with Ahmed Taj. Once again, this outwardly inconsequential Pakistani had appeared at the center of a dire situation.
A quiet knock wrenched her back into the present, and she deleted Taj’s picture from her computer screen. “Come in.”
The door swung open and she squinted at her seventeen-year-old son, backlit by the sun streaming through her house’s windows. She’d completely forgotten it was a beautiful morning.
“Why’s it so dark in here, Mom?”
“I have a bit of a headache.”
“Maybe that’s because you sit around in this closet all the time,” he said, playing the exasperated teen to hide his concern. “It’s awesome on the back deck.”
“You make a good point. Maybe I’ll try that.”
Tommy didn’t respond but also didn’t move from the door frame. He obviously had something to say and Kennedy stared silently at him for a few seconds, before admonishing herself. It was a tactic she used to draw information out of her opponents. This was her child.
“What’s on your mind, son?”
He looked at his shoes. “Is Mitch going to be at the game tomorrow?”
After their divorce, Tommy’s father had moved away and completely lost interest in his boy. Rapp had done a lot to fill that void over the years, taking Tommy to ball games, remembering every birthday, and teaching him the fine art of lacrosse.
“I don’t know. He’s out of town.”
“Where?”
“Surfing, I think.”
Tommy laughed and answered her obvious lie with a quote from Apocalypse Now. “Charlie don’t surf.”
He was an extraordinarily intelligent and insightful boy. Straight A’s with no effort, nearly a perfect score on his SATs, and every college from Harvard to MIT actively recruiting him. He was also extremely inquisitive, which wasn’t always a good thing. He’d made it his business to become an encyclopedia of the CIA, with a particular interest in every bad decision, screwup, and unintended consequence in its long history. As forms of rebellion went, she supposed it was better than alcohol or drugs.
“So you think he might miss it?” Tommy said, sounding a little hopeful. “That he might not be back in time?”
“You seem relieved.”
Another brief examination of his shoes. “The guy’s, like, a lacrosse genius. Some people still think he’s the best player ever. Did you know he can remember where everyone on the field was at any point in a game? It’s like you guys installed a computer chip in his brain.” He paused. “You didn’t, did you?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“So, he’s basically Wayne Gretzky. And I’m just okay.”
His assessment was entirely accurate. In fact, the only reason he was even okay was that Rapp had been working with him since he was six. Kennedy admired people who could realistically assess their weaknesses and normally would wonder aloud about the best way for them to minimize the effect of those weaknesses. This wasn’t one of her operatives, though.
“You’re too hard on yourself, Tommy. Mitch says you’re doing really well.”
“Give me a break, Mom. He thinks I’m slow, inaccurate, and too passive.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because he told me I’m slow, inaccurate, and too passive.”
She made a mental note to talk to Rapp about that. “He just wants you to be the best you can be.”
“I know, Mom. But it’s a little . . .” His voice trailed off and she smiled sympathetically. What could the ki
d do? He’d inherited his parents’ four left feet.
“Is it fun?”
“Sure. The guys are great. And we have cheerleaders now.”
“Then go out there and have a good time, Tommy. Don’t worry about impressing Mitch. Worry about impressing those cheerleaders.”
CHAPTER 30
NEAR LAKE CONSTANCE
SWITZERLAND
RAPP swung his Glock right, tracking motion at the end of the hallway. He lined his sights up on the head of the maid he’d seen earlier and watched her disappear back through the doorway with a strangled scream.
He continued moving along the hazy corridor, clearing rooms as he went. According to Coleman, at least one tango was in the attic with a sniper rifle. Another would be operating the Gatling gun, but there was no way to know if he was doing it directly or remotely. Rapp guessed the latter. When he’d started in this business, setting something like that up would have cost millions of dollars and required an army of engineers. Now it could be done by a couple of teenagers with an iPhone.
As he passed, Rapp closed the door to the room the maid was hiding in. Judging from her expression, she could be trusted to stay put until this was over. Hopefully, Obrecht’s other civilian employees were similarly holed up.
Near the end of the hallway, he paused again. The question was whether to take the wide-open stairs that dominated the front of the building or the less prominent servants’ access he and Gould had come up. Neither option was good, but he calculated his odds as slightly better on the main staircase. The other offered no room to maneuver and his gut said it was being covered.
On this rare occasion, his gut was wrong. He eased down the steps, staying low behind the railing and searching for targets. Nothing. In the ground-floor entryway, he slipped by an elaborate flower arrangement and passed the entrance to the service stairs unchallenged. With their limited remaining manpower, the mercs appeared to have retreated to prearranged defensive positions—probably concentrated on the front and rear entrances.
Outside, there was still silence. Coleman was stuck and Obrecht’s men were satisfied to turn this into a stalemate. Time was on their side. The local authorities were likely already on their way.
Rapp slid with his back against the wall until he came to the closed door leading to the basement. Obrecht would either be down there trying to figure out why he couldn’t get his safe room door open, or he’d be in the tunnel heading for Joe Maslick’s position. Either way, that little Swiss prick was going to spill everything he knew before Rapp put him in the ground.
He reached out and twisted the knob, throwing the door open. The sharp hiss of a silenced weapon followed immediately and two holes appeared in the wall across from him. Obrecht? Probably not. Based on the speed of the trigger finger and the tight grouping, one of his security team.
The light in the basement was on and Rapp slapped a hand around the jamb, sliding it down the wall and catching the switch. A round hit close enough to send splinters of wood into his unprotected forearm. He ignored the superficial wound and retreated behind a heavy sideboard, using his shoulder to shove it toward the open door. More shots sounded as he squeezed it through the opening, but they couldn’t penetrate the thick mahogany. He followed it inside, pushing it along the landing until it tipped partially down the stairs. Movement became audible below as the shooter tried to find an angle.
Rapp grabbed one of the night-vision-enabled helmets he’d hidden by the stairs and slammed the door behind him. The darkness closed in and he heard the man below freeze, suddenly unable to navigate the cluttered space. After toggling the goggles’ power switch, Rapp gave the sideboard one last shove.
The heavy piece of furniture careened down the stairs with Rapp following inches behind. The puff of silenced shots joined the crackle of splintering wood as the man below attempted to aim by ear. He was effective enough that halfway down Rapp ducked under the railing and took the short drop, landing next to a stack of decaying pallets.
The sideboard hit the floor a moment later, barely holding together as it came to a stop. Rapp moved right, holding his breath and watching his foot placements to remain completely silent. Everything was bathed in a computer-generated false light and he immediately picked out two separate targets in the bright orange that denoted body heat. The one near the safe room was slumped against the closed door in a seated position. The other was lying in the dirt holding something that Rapp’s goggles painted half blue and half red. The cool metal of a gun tipped with a hot silencer.
Every man had his breaking point and the prone merc finally reached his. Trails of color streaked from the hazy image as he switched to full automatic and started spraying bullets randomly around the basement. Rapp ignored the rounds flying past him and ricocheting off the stone walls. He squeezed off a single shot and a moment later the only sound in the basement was emanating from a nicked water pipe.
He approached the mercenary carefully despite the fact that he was picking up specks of body-heat orange spread out around what a moment ago had been the man’s head. Satisfied that he was dead, Rapp moved silently toward the tango near the safe room.
It was slow going, but he managed to come within three feet without making any sound at all. Once in position, he reached out and touched his silencer to the side of the man’s head.
Nothing.
Rapp retracted the night-vision gear and fished a small penlight from his pocket. He switched it on and found exactly what he’d feared: Leo Obrecht with his throat slit ear to ear. Whatever had been locked up in his head was going to stay there.
Rapp used the penlight to find the tunnel entrance and punched the code Gould had given him into the keypad. The chances of it working were close to zero but it was worth a try. He still needed to retrieve Hurley’s body and if he could slip it out this way, there was a good chance his entire team could be on a jet back to the States before sundown. The surviving mercs would tell their story and at the end of a multiyear investigation, the German authorities would chalk this up to Obrecht getting in over his head with a professional assassin.
Of course, Gould’s code didn’t work. So that left the hard way.
Rapp skirted the sideboard at the bottom of the steps and ascended to the door again. There was no sound on the other side, so he eased it open. A quick check in both directions suggested that Obrecht’s guards either were ignorant of what had just happened to their comrade or didn’t care enough to come to his aid. Probably the latter.
The servants’ stairs still appeared to be unguarded, so Rapp ran for them, ascending the tightly winding steps three at a time. He continued until they dead-ended into a bare wood door leading into the attic. The way it was aligned meant that it should open directly onto the west-facing dormers where the rifleman worrying Coleman would be set up.
Snipers tended to work in teams, so Rapp assumed two men. Based on their vantage point, it would make sense for the spotter to be at the dormer to the right. That would also put him in a reasonable position to cover the door. Based on the architectural plans he’d studied, Rapp put the spotter at two o’clock with the sniper dead at twelve. What would be between him and the two mercs was impossible to know for certain. Even if the attic was as cluttered as the basement, though, he guessed he’d have a shot. They would have moved anything obstructing their line of retreat.
Rapp took a few steps back and charged the door, throwing a foot out into the ancient wood. As expected, it gave easily, and he went sailing through, gun stretched out in front of him.
The spotter was right where he expected him to be. Also as anticipated, he’d been paying close attention to the door. Rapp saw a muzzle flash and felt the sting of a bullet grazing his right shoulder. He lined up his sights and fired, twisting in the air without bothering to confirm if he’d hit his target. When he landed on the wood floor, he was facing the sniper who was spinning in his direction. The rifle was far too unwieldy for him to move quickly, though, and Rapp’s shot hit him directl
y between the eyes.
Rapp got to his feet and moved to the edge of the window, careful not to expose himself to Bruno McGraw, who would be watching for movement. He activated his throat mike, mindful that the frequency had been compromised. “Ended like Herat, too.”
Coleman would understand. Rapp had resolved their sniper problem in that Afghan town by scaling the wall and shooting the man through a broken window.
“Roger that.”
Rapp was now able to move to a better vantage point without worrying about being taken out by McGraw. He could see the damage to the wall was as impressive as the guy from Raytheon had promised—a burning hole that you could drive a semi through. Other than the two dead men on the ground, none of Obrecht’s mercs were in evidence. The Gatling gun was bolted to a platform on the north end of the wall. There was no operator visible, but various cables and flexible hoses were. Definitely remote controlled. But from where?
Rapp started for the exit but then spotted an iPad lying on the floor next to the dead spotter. He was going to stuff it in the waistband of his fatigues for Dumond to examine but stopped when the screen came to life.
It displayed four squares arranged vertically on the left. Three were blank and one was feeding video of the tree line west of the wall. Alongside each square were arrows for up, down, right, and left, as well as a green and red button. He pressed the right arrow next to the live image and it tracked obediently north.
Rapp moved to a position where he could see the Gatling gun placement and tapped the arrow again. If the only man who could help them figure out Joe Rickman’s plan weren’t lying dead in the basement, he might have actually smiled. The gun obeyed his command.
