by Vince Flynn
“It seemed to go smoothly.”
“Good.” Turning his attention to Rapp the president said, “General Flood tells me he talked with you this morning.”
“That’s right.”
“So what do you think?”
“I think we have one hell of a problem.”
“We sure do,” replied the president, “and that’s why I want you involved.” The commander in chief of the world’s sole superpower stared unflinchingly at one of his best offensive weapons.
Rapp already knew his answer. His day had been filled with a repeating chain of thoughts: Anna, Donatella and Baghdad. It had gone like that over and over. As soon as he stopped thinking about one it was on to the next. He didn’t know it, but he’d already started to build walls around the Anna issue. His feelings were hurt, and his defense mechanisms had kicked in. His undying love had been damaged. He’d begun to question Anna’s loyalty and sense of commitment. Maybe she wasn’t the one for him. Not if she wouldn’t give him the common courtesy of allowing him to explain himself. The more Rapp thought about her storming out in Milan, the more distance it put between them. If she couldn’t understand the importance of what he did, he was better off without her.
That, at least, was the flimsy conclusion he’d come to the last time he’d thought of her. It had been several hours earlier. He’d gone to his home on the bay to get some things, and he was instantly awash in memories of Anna. Everywhere he turned there were reminders of her. They were too painful to deal with, so he pushed them from his mind. He hurriedly gathered his things and left. He refused to admit the truth to himself. That he would give or do almost anything to get her back. Rapp was too busy putting up walls. Sealing off that part of his life so he could deal with more urgent problems.
“We really need your help on this one, Mitch,” the president pleaded.
For the most part, Rapp had already made up his mind. For a lot of good reasons he didn’t want the hospital bombed by the air force. The Iraqi patients and the medical staff inside should be spared if at all possible, and on an almost equal footing was the fallout from the bombing. Every terrorist group in the Middle East would receive an influx of cash and recruits as a result of the military action. The evil United States of America would be blamed for everything. No one would dare question Saddam’s despicable act of placing the facility under a hospital. The anger would be directed toward America. Leveling the hospital would create more problems down the road. He’d seen it before.
These were the reasons he would give to the president and Kennedy, but there was a third. It was one that he would never speak of. It was one that only a warrior would understand. Colonel Gray knew it without question. The challenge, the thrill of such a mission was something that very few would ever experience. This operation was the sort that could shape history. It would be written about years from now as either one of the greatest Special Forces successes of all time or one of the most spectacular blunders. It would be looked at as the Mount Everest of covert operations. For Rapp to walk away from such a crusade was unthinkable.
He looked at President Hayes and said, “Sir, you can count on me.”
President Hayes let out a sigh of relief. “You’ll never know how comforting it is for me to have you involved.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I’m sure you will. Any ideas yet, on how you’re going to get in?”
“I’ve got a couple, but I want to run them by Colonel Gray first.”
“Understandable.”
“Sir,” interjected Kennedy. “There’s something else we need to discuss with you.”
Hayes could tell by the tone of her voice that it was serious. He leaned back in his chair and formed a steeple with his hands. “Let’s hear it.”
“We know who killed Peter Cameron.”
The president bounced forward immediately. “Who?”
“Her name is Donatella Rahn. She used to work for Mossad, and now she’s what we refer to as an independent contractor.”
The president cocked his head to the side. “You said she used to work for Mossad.”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“What in the hell is she doing killing former employees of the CIA and American citizens?”
Rapp spoke up. “She didn’t know who he was, sir. She was simply hired, wired a sum of money and given the basic information on her target. Nowhere in the information did it say that Cameron used to work for the CIA.”
“Who hired her to kill Cameron?”
Rapp didn’t feel it was his place to answer the question so he turned to his boss. Kennedy scratched the tip of her nose with the back of her hand and said, “We don’t know who took the contract out on Cameron, sir, but we know who Donatella’s handler is.” Kennedy looked down briefly, taking a moment to steel herself against the ensuing explosion.
“Who?”
“Donatella’s handler is Ben Freidman.”
“What?” the question spat from the president’s mouth as if it had a bad taste to it.
“Somebody, we do not know who, contacted Ben Freidman and took out a hit on Peter Cameron. It was a rush job and it paid well. Freidman in turn gave the job to Donatella.”
“And she succeeded!” The president stood and started pacing. “How in the hell did we get this information?”
“Mitch has worked with Donatella before.”
The president stopped and spun around. Looking at Rapp he said, “You’ve worked with this woman. What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“When she was with Mossad, sir, we conducted several operations against Hezbollah.” Rapp was not the type to be unnerved by a little emotion, even if it came from the president. “I have a lot of trust and respect for her, sir.”
Rapp’s words caused the president to back off a bit. Turning to Kennedy he asked, “What in the hell is Ben Freidman doing involved in something like this?”
“I’m not sure, sir.”
Before she finished her answer Hayes had resumed his pacing. “Why is it that I get this horrible feeling that Israel has been meddling in the affairs of this country?”
“I’m not so sure, sir.” Kennedy spoke carefully. “We have debriefed Donatella and she claims—”
“What do you mean, debriefed? We have her?”
“Yes. She’s here in the U.S. Mitch brought her back from Italy. That’s where she lives.”
“What?” The president was beet red with anger.
Rapp thought it was time to weigh in. “Sir, we had a suspicion that Donatella may have been involved in Cameron’s death, so I went to Italy to talk to her. While I was visiting her there was an attempt on her life. It would appear that she had outgrown her usefulness to Colonel Freidman.”
Hayes stopped pacing and stabbed his index fingers onto the surface of the table. “Irene, does the attempt on Mitch’s life in Germany and the assassination of Peter Cameron have anything to do with this crap going on in Baghdad?”
After hesitating, Kennedy replied, “I don’t think so, sir, but I’m looking into it.”
Now Hayes’s face was really red. “Well, what do you say I pick up the phone and call Prime Minister Goldberg?”
Kennedy shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, sir.”
“Well, I do,” snapped Hayes. “I don’t like it when our allies are involved in the assassination of Americans.” Hayes pointed and added, “Especially when it happens less than a mile from the White House.”
Kennedy decided it was time to be more forceful. “Sir, you’ll get no disagreement from me. Ben Freidman is going to have to answer some very tough questions, but as of right now I don’t think the problem in Baghdad has anything to do with this. Our satellite images tell us that something unusual was built under that hospital. Most likely some type of a hardened bunker. Also, the information on the North Koreans checks out, and we know Saddam has been working toward this goal for some time. As far as the other issue is concerned, Donatella te
lls us Freidman set this deal up with her when she left Mossad. Freidman takes a third of the contract and everything is run through him. Donatella says the fee on Cameron was a half a million dollars. She claims Israel would never pay that kind of money.”
“Then who in the hell did?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Hayes threw up his arms in frustration. “Great. Do you have any ideas on how to find out?”
“Yes, I do. When the time is right we’re going to ask Ben Freidman.”
“And you expect him to give us a straight answer?”
“Yes, I do, sir. And I expect quite a bit more from him as well.”
Hayes eyed her for a second. What she had just said reminded him of Thomas Stansfield. “Would you like to let me in on your plan?”
“No.” Kennedy shook her head. “You have enough to worry about with the situation in Baghdad. When the time is right you’re going to play a very active roll in getting the truth from Ben Freidman. Trust me.”
34
FORT BRAGG, NORTH CAROLINA, SATURDAY MORNING
Early the next morning Rapp boarded a CIA Learjet for the relatively short hop from D.C. down to Fayetteville, North Carolina. In his possession were two large duffels and a garment bag. The duffels contained various weapons and ammunition that he might need for the mission, plus a few necessities. He did not plan on returning to D.C. until the mission was over. In the garment bag was a surprise. It involved something he’d been perfecting for years.
As the plane took off, Rapp looked out the small window and allowed himself to think of Anna one last time. He told himself this really would be it. He would need absolute focus and clarity in everything he did until the nukes were taken out. It was painful to think of her. He wondered where she was. If she was on her way back to America or sitting in the sun on the terrace of the breathtaking villa he’d rented on the Amalfi Coast. He imagined lying beside her, his arm under her head, his hand on her naked hip, their legs intertwined, her gorgeous green eyes staring dreamily at him, her perfect lips turned up in a blissful smile. She looked so happy in his dreams, the way he’d seen her on so many occasions before. Why couldn’t it have stayed that way?
His hopes, his dreams for a normal life were in tatters. He’d been a fool for ever thinking he could have that life. He was a killer. Men like him didn’t marry someone like Anna. They were oceans apart. She was worried about who he’d slept with before they met, and he was trying to find out who had hired Peter Cameron to kill him. It was almost comical when you took a step back. When he looked at it this way it caused him to think Anna was selfish or at least self-absorbed. She couldn’t understand the commitment and sacrifices he’d made, and if she couldn’t do that, they had serious problems. Sure, she’d been appreciative that he’d saved her from being raped and probably killed. His secret life with the CIA was fine, just so long as it involved saving her, but in any other light it was horrible and intolerable. And to end it all over something so sophomoric as jealousy was pathetic. Maybe she wasn’t the woman for him.
That’s how Rapp came to grips with his dashed dreams. Anna had always told him it was fate that he’d intervened that horrible night in the White House. Well, maybe it was fate, and maybe it was fate that things had fallen apart in Milan before he’d asked her to marry him. To a certain degree he really believed in fate, or at least that things happened in life for a reason. If they were truly meant to be together she would be there when he got back.
COLONEL GRAY WAS waiting for Rapp when the plane landed at Pope Air Force Base, which was adjacent to Fort Bragg. He was in his green camouflage fatigues, a beret and black jump boots that were polished to perfection. Despite the late autumn chill he had his sleeves rolled up to the middle of his muscular and tanned forearms. Unlike most of his men Gray kept his hair short, since he didn’t go into the field anymore. Delta Force operators were given a special dispensation by the Army on hair regulations. The intent was to allow them to blend in with the general population when they were deployed.
Gray, in his mid-forties, was still in peak physical condition. He jogged five miles five days a week and still managed to keep up with the new recruits on the obstacle course. To keep his skills sharp he fired over two hundred rounds a day on Delta’s various ranges. Gray believed in leading by example. The man did not have a pretentious bone in his body.
As Rapp stepped from the plane Gray rushed forward to help him with his bags. They stowed Rapp’s luggage in the back of the colonel’s Humvee and jumped in.
“Thanks for coming down, Mitch. I really appreciate it. I got a little worried the other day when I heard you were looking at retiring.”
Rapp shrugged off the question and not wanting to get into the details of his disastrous love life, he simply said, “I’m getting old, Colonel.”
“The hell you are. You’re old when you get to be my age. You’re still a young pup.”
Rapp figured Gray was in his mid-forties, still relatively young by any normal standards, but by Special Force’s standards he was ancient. “Where are we off to this morning?”
Gray wrestled with the steering wheel on the Humvee like he was a city bus driver. He turned it around a corner and hit the gas. “I want to show you something before I bring you over for the briefing.”
A minute later they pulled inside a massive airplane hangar where an equally massive C-141 Starlifter was being loaded with equipment. The colonel shut off the Humvee, and he and Rapp jumped out. Near the rear of the plane were three vehicles sitting under gray tarps. Gray approached the last one and pulled the tarp off. Underneath was a white Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan.
“What do you think?”
Rapp was smiling. “No offense, Colonel, but the army isn’t exactly known for throwing money around. How did you get your hands on these?”
Gray opened the driver’s door. “We do the DEA a lot of favors. We help train their SWAT guys and in general help them with tactical training.”
“And?”
“I told them if they ever come across any Mercedes sedans to let me know. We got them cheap.”
“Drug seizures?”
“Yep. And that’s only half of it. They’re armor-plated. Some crazy Colombian drug dealer down in Miami owned them. A white one, a black one and a silver one. We painted them all white.” Gray gestured to the other side of the car. “Get in. I want to show you a few things.”
Rapp got into the front passenger seat, and looked at the dash. Colonel Gray was pointing to a computer screen beneath the radio on the dashboard. “The car comes standard with a GPS map system. We brought in some techno-weenies from the National Reconnaissance Office and had them program the system for every street in Baghdad and all the main and secondary roads leading in and out of the city.”
Rapp nodded. “You have them in all three cars?”
“Yep.”
“That’s huge. No more Mogadishus.” Rapp was referring to an operation in Somalia back in 1993 when things went horribly wrong for a task force of U.S. Special Forces. After grabbing several top lieutenants of a war lord, the ground element of the force came under fire and got lost in the maze of streets that crisscrossed the Third World hellhole. Even with a command helicopter circling high above the city giving the ground element directions on how to avoid roadblocks and get out of the war lord’s stronghold, the convoy continued to take wrong turns. Taking heavy fire the group was pinned down for the night. By the time the operation was over eighteen soldiers were dead and dozens more critically injured. Despite killing over 400 Somalis the operation was looked on as a disaster back in Washington.
“The windows are all bulletproof, the tires are self-sealing and we added sunroofs to the backseat so the men can fire the heavy equipment while moving.”
Rapp looked around the vehicle admiringly. He thought he knew the answer but he asked anyway. “Why didn’t you go with limos?”
“We thought about it, and even fooled around with the idea a bit, but it
really complicated the mission profile. If we used the limos we would either have to drive them in across the border, which presented some problems that we wanted to avoid, or we would have to load them on C-130s and either drop them by pallet and parachute, or land the planes in Iraq and offload them, which for obvious reasons we didn’t like. One of my men who’d been pouring over reconnaissance photographs noticed that not all of these caravans are limousines. Some of them use sedans. Several in particular use these Mercedes E-Class sedans.”
“Those are the ones used by his son Uday,” added Rapp.
“The sadistic little bastard?”
“Yep.”
“Where’d you get that info?”
Rapp grinned. “I have my sources.”
“I’m sure you do.” Gray studied Rapp for a moment with his shrewd eyes, wondering how far he should push. “Does the fact that Uday uses these cars hurt or help?”
“Oh,” said Rapp, “I think it helps.”
“What do you know that I don’t?”
“I’ll tell you later, when you give me the briefing. For now I’d like to hear the rest of what you were saying.”
“Going to the sedans simplified things greatly for us. They fit into the Chinooks that we use for deep penetration operations. Using the Chinooks we can fly in under radar and land exactly where we want.”
“Perfect. I’m impressed, Colonel.”
“Well, let’s hope you still are when you’ve heard the briefing.”
HIDDEN AMONG THE tall pine trees of North Carolina is a military compound known as the SOT. It stands for Special Operations Training Facility. The eight-mile perimeter of the compound is surrounded by a double fence topped with razor wire. The no-man’s-land between the two fences is loaded with microwave sensors and cameras. Inside the fence line, tall earth berms conceal the movement of the people who train at the hundred-million-dollar facility. The men who occupy the area are referred to as operators. The SOT is home to Delta Force, the U.S. Army’s ultrasecret counterterrorism Special Forces unit.
