Vince Flynn Collectors' Edition 2

by Vince Flynn

  Finally, at 6:27 Donatella entered the noisy, crowded bar in a black pant suit with a coat draped over one arm. Like two true professionals they barely glanced at each other. They’d been taught the same thing. Trouble almost always comes from where you’d least expect it. Get the target to focus on one thing and then blindside them. They both warily checked their flanks to make sure no one was coming after them. Rapp watched heads turn as the gorgeous Donatella walked through the bar. His eyes expertly scanned the crowded bar, searching for faces he’d seen before, and looking for a pair of eyes that were watching him rather than the stunning brunette.

  Donatella smiled her devilish smile and came around to his side of the booth. She kissed him on the cheek and then with her curvaceous hip she bumped him to the side and sat practically on his lap. Her intent was twofold. First of all, she did not want to sit with her back to the door and second, she did not want to have to talk across the table. It would be much better if they could whisper in each other’s ear.

  “Sorry I’m late,” said Donatella in Italian. She shook her head to the side in an effort to move some of her thick mane out of the way.

  “What was the holdup?” asked Rapp in her native tongue.

  “It was a disastrous day. We had a shoot that cost a lot of money and produced nothing but crap, and then the only man I’ve ever truly loved stopped by my office and told me he was getting married.” Donatella flagged down a passing waiter and ordered a double Stoly martini with a lemon peel. When the waiter was gone she turned back to Rapp and said, “All in all it’s been a really shitty day.” With a fake smile she asked, “And how was your day, honey?”

  Rapp felt a little guilty. “I’m sorry, Donny. I never meant to hurt you.” Taking her hand he said, “You’ve always been very special to me, and you always will be.”

  “But not that special.” She stared at Rapp with her dark brown, almond-shaped eyes, her full lips pursed as if she might begin to cry.

  Rapp put his right arm around her and pulled her tight. He kissed her forehead and said, “You have to have faith that everything will turn out.”

  Donatella pushed away; her eyes were moist. “That’s easy for you to say. You have someone. You’ve found the person you want to marry, and what do I have? Nothing.”

  “You have to have faith that it will happen for you, too.”

  “My faith was you. However foolish it might have been, I thought one day we’d walk away from all of this crap and live happily ever after.”

  After brushing a tear from her cheek, Rapp said, “We haven’t exactly seen a lot of each other over the past year.”

  “I know, it was foolish of me, but dammit, I loved you. I still love you.”

  Rapp swallowed uncomfortably. He knew Donatella to be a very passionate woman, but he didn’t expect her to show this much emotion. “Donny, I loved you very much. You know that. We were there for each other during some of the worst times.”

  She nodded, but kept her head tilted down, buried in his chest. Pulling herself together a bit, she looked up and said, “I’m happy for you . . . I really am . . . it’s just that . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “What?”

  “This is a lonely fucking business.”

  Rap knew all too well what she meant. He pulled her close and squeezed tight. “Don’t worry, Donny. If you’re ready to put it all behind you, I’ll make it happen.” Rapp decided at that exact moment that he would do whatever it took to bring her in. He would use whatever leverage he had to make sure she was safe.

  Donatella sat up and grabbed a handkerchief from her bag. She blotted the tears from her eyes and said, “I’m not done yet. I have a few more years left before I can retire.”

  Rapp thought of the fate of Peter Cameron and decided she might not have a few more years. At that moment the waiter approached the table and set Donatella’s drink down.

  “He’ll have a glass of your house red wine, please.” Donatella dismissed the waiter and turned to Rapp. “If I’m going to cry and drink vodka I’m not going to let you get away with drinking coffee.”

  Rapp didn’t argue. He instead used the opening to get to the point. “Donny.” Rapp looked her in the eye to make sure she knew how serious he was. “I’m going to tell you some things, and as always they’re in complete confidence. In return I need you to be honest with me.”

  Donatella set her drink down and moved back a bit. She’d been thinking about how she was going to handle this all day and as yet she hadn’t come up with a solution. “I’ll do my best.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I’ll do my best.”

  “Will you be honest with me?”

  “I’ll be honest with you, but you know there are certain things I can’t answer no matter what our history is.”

  Reluctantly, Rapp conceded the point and asked, “Are you going to answer the question that I asked you in your office this afternoon?”

  She’d thought about little else since he’d left, that and the fact that the man of her dreams was going to marry someone else. Her first instinct was to lie. It had nothing to do with Mitch, it was standard operating procedure. Everybody was on a need to know basis, and if someone wasn’t in the loop they shouldn’t be asking the question. Hence they shouldn’t be offended when they found out they were lied to. Mitch fell into a different category, though. They had been through so much, and not just in the bedroom, but in the field. There was an unspoken rule between them. If you can’t answer the question, don’t. Mitch knew something. She had no idea how, but one thing was clear, somehow he knew she was in Washington several weeks ago.

  Rapp leaned in and repeated the question. “Were you in Washington several weeks ago?”

  Donatella took a sip of the cold vodka. “Yes.”

  “Did you spend any time at George Washington University?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “I do.”

  “No one else?” asked a skeptical Donatella.

  “Oh, there are others, but no one wants to know as bad as I do.”

  “And why is that?”

  Rapp studied her for a second. They could go on like this for hours, like two tennis players volleying the ball across the net at each other. He was in no mood for such a game; he didn’t have the time. Taking a calculated risk he said, “There was a professor at George Washington University that I really wanted to talk to. Unfortunately, someone stuck a pick in his ear and scrambled his brain before I could get to him. Any idea who would do such a thing?”

  Donatella fidgeted and looked away at the crowd. She knew he had her. He’d seen her kill that way before. Choosing to deflect his question by asking one of her own she said, “Why did you want to talk to him?”

  Rapp’s eyes lit up with anger. He leaned in until his nose was just inches away from Donatella’s. His response was spoken through gritted teeth. “Because he tried to kill me.”

  SITUATION ROOM, THURSDAY MORNING

  COLONEL GRAY HAD the room’s rapt attention. Even the unflappable Irene Kennedy was shaking her head in disbelief at the Delta Force commander’s bold plan. Its audacity was absolutely beautiful.

  President Hayes looked at the colonel with a slightly miffed expression and asked, “You’ve already practiced this?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How?”

  “We took three MH-47E heavy lift helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) and loaded them each with one Mercedes sedan and four Delta operators. We flew the planes from Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina to Hulbert Field in Florida. Once we arrived we conducted eight separate infiltration and exfiltration operations over an eight-day period. We tried to make the exercise as realistic as possible. Each night we sent out two MH-53 J Pave Lows with Delta operators in each bird. Their job was to secure the landing area for the arrival of the MH-47Es. The first two nights we made it easy on them. We selected paved roads on remote parts of the base
. The Pave Lows arrived at the preselected area and secured and marked the landing strip. The MH-47Es arrived and landed without incident. The cars were unloaded and the Delta operators took off on their simulated mission. The cars were then reloaded and the choppers took off.

  “The next two nights the Pave Lows arrived and found the designated area occupied by potentially hostile forces. They had to move onto the secondary landing sites and so forth. With each passing night we made the mission increasingly difficult. We simulated one of the choppers breaking down, we simulated the force coming under attack in the middle of unloading the cars, we threw everything at them.”

  “And?” the president asked.

  “They fared very well. We finished the exercise with an understanding of what should be done to increase the odds for success. We also came away believing that if called on we could put this plan into action in very short order.”

  The president blinked several times and said, “So you’re telling me you think you could fly a couple of these choppers into Iraq, land, unload the cars, drive into Baghdad, hit the target and get everybody out safely.” The president shook his head. “Excuse me if I sound skeptical, but this seems a little over the top.”

  “I’m in the business of over the top, sir. That’s what you pay me for.”

  President Hayes laughed and then leaned forward. “Colonel, do you really think you could pull something like this off?”

  “That depends on what type of cover you’re willing to give us, sir.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If what I’ve just described to you represents the entire scope of the operation,” Gray paused for a second while he calculated the odds of success. “I’d give my men a fifty to sixty percent chance of achieving the primary goal and making it out without any casualties.”

  The president grimaced. “I don’t like those odds.”

  “I can get them closer to ninety percent if you’re willing to expand the scope of the operation.”

  “How?”

  Gray glanced at the two generals before continuing. Both Flood and Campbell signaled for him to proceed. “It would be very difficult to get the choppers that deep into Iraqi airspace without them being picked up. To pull this off, we’d need to create some chaos. General Flood has informed me that one of your contingencies is for massive air strikes.”

  “It’s something I’m considering.”

  “Well, if the fly-boys were to go in and wreak havoc with the Iraqis’ air defenses and lines of communications just prior to my boys going in, it would create the perfect environment. And if they could continue bombing until we were back out it would be a huge help.”

  With a look of disbelief, the president asked, “You want to send your men into Baghdad with bombs dropping all around them?”

  “Yes.” Gray sat forward and gestured with his hands. “We’d create a safe corridor for the team to get in and out of the city. No bombs would be dropped in that zone, and no bombs would be dropped within, let’s say, a six-block radius of the hospital.”

  “Colonel, I haven’t been at this job very long, but I do know that our aviators don’t always hit their target. Don’t you think it’s a little dangerous to send your men into a city that we’re bombing?”

  Colonel Gray looked his president in the eye and said, “Sir, being a Delta Force commando is dangerous. No one fights for me who doesn’t want to be there. If my men wanted a safe job they’d go sell cars for a living.”

  “Point well taken, but . . .” The president remained skeptical. “This seems awfully complicated and,” Hayes looked down the length of the table at General Flood, “you always tell me the more complicated these things get the better chance there is that something will go wrong.”

  “That is usually true, sir,” answered the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

  Colonel Gray wasn’t to be deterred. “Mr. President, I’ll grant that this is complicated, but I can give you two things that the air force can’t.” Forcefully, Gray continued. “Let’s not forget the primary objective. We need to be sure that we destroy the nukes. I can guarantee that we’ll know whether those nukes are actually underneath that hospital. The air force can’t give you that guarantee, sir. My men can. They will get into that facility, and they will provide you with a bona fide answer as to whether or not those nukes are actually there. We can destroy the weapons on site, and since they are in a fortified bunker, I’m confident that we could pull the mission off without having to kill all of the innocent people in the hospital.” Gray paused briefly to let the president think about what he’d said and then added, “If you do it the air force’s way, you will be ostracized by the international community for bombing a hospital. You will have no real proof that those nuclear weapons actually existed. Saddam will bus in the journalists so they can shoot footage of the twisted bodies in the rubble. There will be pictures of mothers holding dead babies covered in dust, and the entire Arab world will hate us even more than they already do. Saddam’s control will be further consolidated around a wave of anti-American sentiment and the U.N. will likely vote to end the economic sanctions—”

  General Campbell interrupted his subordinate and said, “Colonel, let’s stick to our area of expertise, and leave the other stuff to the president and his staff.”

  President Hayes held up his hand and said, “That’s all right . . . that’s all right. I think Colonel Gray has very succinctly stated what we’ve all been afraid to say.” President Hayes sat quietly for a moment while he thought about the fallout from the air strikes. The colonel was right. The current coalition against Iraq was in such a weakened state that it wouldn’t take much to put an end to it. The bombing would more than likely end all economic sanctions. The Israelis had dumped one hell of a problem into his lap. In frustration, Hayes turned to Irene Kennedy and said, “I’d like to hear your thoughts.”

  20

  MILAN, THURSDAY EVENING

  Donatella was speechless. In two large gulps she finished her vodka martini and began in earnest her search for the waiter. She caught the man’s eye as he was maneuvering his way through the crowd with a tray of drinks. Holding up her empty glass by the stem she asked for another. Her head was swimming and it wasn’t from the vodka, at least not yet. She was scrambling to try to figure out how she had been pulled into this. Who had contacted Ben Freidman and hired him to kill Peter Cameron? It wasn’t an official Mossad hit. This was purely a freelance venture. She knew because her fee for killing Cameron was already sitting in a Swiss bank account, and Mossad would have never paid her so well.

  “Donny, I want some answers.” Rapp’s anger had not diminished.

  Donatella was flustered. The hit on Peter Cameron had been advertised as an easy one, but she should have known better. The fee was too high, even for a rush job. She took a deep breath. “Why did he try to kill you?”

  Rapp leaned back in. “You didn’t answer my question. Who hired you to kill him?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “Believe me, I know far less about this mess than you do.”

  “You know who hired you.”

  “Mitchell, please tell me why this man tried to kill you.”

  “All right, Donny, I’ll tell you, but when I’m done you’re going to tell me who hired you and why.” Donatella turned again in search of the waiter and Rapp reached up and grabbed her sculpted chin. Pulling it back toward him, he looked her in the eye and said, “Give me your word.”

  Donatella reached up and tried to push his hand away. “Don’t start ordering me around.”

  Rapp kept his hand firmly on her chin. “Donny, I’m here as your friend. There are people in Washington who are really upset about this. Half of them want to put a price on your head and the other half want to talk to your old employers in Israel.”

  With her eyes closed Donatella began muttering to herself. When she opened her eyes she calmly said, “Tell me why he tried to kill you.”

  Rapp released her chin as the waiter se
t Donatella’s second drink down. When the man was gone Rapp said, “This goes no further than this table.” Donatella nodded. “I was on an operation recently. Two operators were there to assist me. I was the triggerman, they were backup. I took down the target and then they shot me and left me for dead.”

  A look of concern on her face, Donatella reached out to touch him and asked, “Where?”

  “Two shots, right here.” Rapp pointed to his chest. He read the expression on her face and said, “I know, very unprofessional.” He pointed to his forehead. “They should have double-tapped me, but they had reason to believe that I wasn’t wearing body armor. At any rate, Cameron was the man who paid them. I don’t know who Cameron worked for, and I don’t know what the motivation was to kill me, but I’ll tell you this. . . . Those two people who double-crossed me are dead.”

  “You killed them?”

  “No. Cameron did.”

  Donatella took a drink. “How do you know he killed them?”

  “Someone who I trust very much saw it go down. Cameron pulled the trigger. He then turned on the people who helped him kill the two who he hired to kill me, and then he tried to kill me one more time in Washington.” Rapp sat back. “And I was just about to get my hands on him when you showed up.” Rapp took a drink of wine. “I saw you that day, Donny. You had a blonde wig on. I stepped off the elevator as you entered the staircase at the end of the hall. Something struck me as familiar about you, but I had other things on my mind, like torturing that bastard Cameron so I could find out who hired him. When we picked the lock and got into his office, and I saw the way he’d been killed . . . I knew it was you.”

  Donatella found the need for more of the cold vodka. This was not good business. There was a pattern emerging. It appeared that anyone who’d been hired to fulfill a contract was the next person on the list to be killed. She saw her dreams of getting out of the business vanishing before her eyes. With her eyes closed she nodded and said, “It was me.”