by Vince Flynn
His relationships had always been a study in extremes. Maybe Claudia was the right balance. But was it worth the inevitable pain? The responsibility? The constraints? And more than that, was it fair? Anna was dead. Hurley was dead. Scott was likely dying. The people closest to him didn’t do well and Claudia was responsible for more than just herself. She had a young daughter who needed her.
The wheels hit the ground and a set of headlights flashed to their eleven o’clock. Rapp pointed them out to the pilot before trading his headset for a phone and heading back into the cabin. Irene Kennedy’s private line rang a good five times before she picked up. When that happened it usually meant she was in the midst of the three hours a night she managed to sleep.
“Have you landed?”
“Just touched down,” he said, helping Maslick unstrap the warhead. “What’s the update on Scott?”
Rapp expected the long silence that always preceded reports of the death of a friend, but the news turned out to be slightly more upbeat.
“The calf was all soft-tissue damage and the shot that hit him in the shoulder shattered his collarbone but isn’t anything a metal plate can’t fix. The dislocation was worse than the bullet wound. The head injury was more serious than we initially thought. Beyond the concussion, he has some hairline skull fractures.”
“And the knife?”
“He just got out of a four-hour surgery and they think they’ve repaired the damage . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“But?”
“But the blood loss and heat stroke were extremely serious. The doctors have induced a coma and the expectation is that he’ll never regain consciousness. If he does, they don’t know if he’ll have brain damage.”
Rapp grabbed the nuke’s nosecone and began dragging it toward the door. “Where is he now?”
“On his way to Bethesda in the C-17 you evacuated him in. I’m sure you already know this, but I want to say it anyway. We’re bringing in the world’s top people. Everything that can be done will be done.”
“His mother’s still alive,” Rapp said. “That’s the only family he has. Did you tell her?”
“I haven’t. She’s in the early stages of dementia and I think it would be better if we didn’t contact her until we know more. Certainly not until he’s in an American hospital bed.”
“Or an American grave.”
“I don’t think there’s any point in considering that possibility right now.”
“What about the guy who’s responsible?”
“We have some shaky cell phone footage. He had facial wounds that obscured his features somewhat but our people were able to clean it up and get some solid stills. We have them out to intelligence agencies worldwide but so far no hits.”
Rapp jumped out of the plane and moved away. The night had turned cool but the humidity still hung in the air. He crossed the runway as the lights blinked off and walked into the damp brush at its edge. There was no wind. The only sound was an engine starting up a few hundred yards to the west.
“Tell your people to find him, Irene. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Now.”
“I understand what you’re feeling, Mitch. Believe me, I do. But we’re doing the best we can.” She paused for a moment. “In the meantime, I need you back in Pakistan. After what happened, the Pakistani army is tightening its procedures for moving the country’s arsenal, but there’s the danger that this wasn’t the only warhead targeted. In fact, the army pulling back could make the problem worse.”
“Terrorist groups trying to make a move before the window closes,” Rapp said.
“Exactly.”
“I’ll fly back as soon as I can.”
“Thank you. With both you and Scott gone, our operation there is starting to unravel. And on top of that, we need to return their device. The political pressure is getting heavy and we’re seeing action by the army that we don’t like. This could be the first sign of a coup by General Shirani.”
Rapp let out a long breath. Pakistan run by Shirani would be a disaster. The current president was a scumbag but at least he was a secular, Westward-leaning scumbag. Shirani was a wannabe fundamentalist dictator with an insatiable thirst for power and a deep hatred for the United States.
“We’ll work fast,” he said as an old pickup rolled to a stop next to the jet. “I’ll contact you if we find anything interesting.”
Rapp disconnected the call and walked back onto the tarmac in order to greet the man stepping out of the truck. Craig Bailer was a full three inches taller than Rapp, with thick, tattoo-covered arms extending from a T-shirt extolling the virtues of Pabst Blue Ribbon. His gaunt face was shadowed by three days of stubble and a baseball cap equally enthusiastic about PBR.
“How’s it going, Mitch? Been a while.”
Despite his outward appearance, Bailer held three PhDs—one in nuclear physics and two in fields Rapp couldn’t pronounce. Kennedy had snapped him up after he’d unexpectedly walked away from Lockheed Martin but he’d hated Langley, hated his job, and hated being cooped up in an office. Toward the end of his tenure at headquarters, Bailer had spent most of his time working in the motor pool. In fact, it was he who had tricked out Rapp’s Dodge with full armor, run-flats, nitrous, and bulletproof glass, among other things. The people in personnel were fairly certain he was the best-educated and best-paid auto mechanic in history.
When he inevitably quit, Kennedy had gone into crisis mode. It had been Rapp’s idea to move him into an abandoned Cold War missile facility in a remote corner of Virginia. If Bailer wouldn’t go to the mountain, they’d just move the mountain to him.
Despite the huge financial outlay, though, Bailer spent less time at the facility than he did in the local drunk tank. The Agency only brought him in when there was a job no one else could handle. And that’s just the way the gregarious redneck liked it. He had a legitimate machine shop about twenty miles away where he fabricated custom parts for spy satellites and hot rods.
“Good to see you,” Rapp said, extending a hand. “Sorry about the short notice.”
Behind them, Joe Maslick had the warhead balanced in the plane’s open hatch. “Where’s the transport?”
“Right here,” Bailer said, slapping the side of his truck. He jumped in and backed up to the plane before getting out again to rearrange a cooler and some shovels to make room.
“Roll it on in,” Bailer said.
“That’s a three-foot drop.”
“It’s not a bottle of nitro, Mas. Do you have any idea how many intricate reactions it takes to set one of these things off?”
“No.”
Bailer grinned. “Me neither. But I figure it’s got to be more than two.”
Rapp gave a subtle nod and Maslick rolled the weapon out the door. It hit the bed of the truck with an earsplitting clang, nearly bottoming out the shocks.
“Hop in the back, Mas. There’s not enough room for all three of us in the cab.
Maslick jumped in, his two-hundred-twenty-pound frame pushing the chassis the rest of the way down. “Anything in that cooler?”
“Would I leave you hanging?” Bailer said, sliding behind the wheel.
Rapp opened the passenger door and picked up a stick of dynamite lying in the seat. Bailer grabbed it and tossed it into the back. “I was doing a little fishing last weekend. So how’s the Charger?”
“Stereo sounds like shit,” Rapp said as they accelerated up the tarmac.
“Yeah, I had to take out the main speakers to make room for the Kevlar. They’ve got some thinner stuff now and I’ve got a great sound guy I work with. You should bring it by.”
Maslick banged on the top of the cab with a beer can and Bailer held a hand through his open window to take it. “You want one, Mitch?”
“No.”
He popped it open and took a healthy slug as the vehicle bounced across a grassy field. With the shocks already at their limit, the nuke was making quite a racket bouncing off the sides of the truck’s bed, but Rapp didn’t worry
about it. If Craig Bailer said it wasn’t a problem, it wasn’t a problem.
They finally skidded to a stop in an unremarkable part of the field and Bailer pointed to the visor above the passenger seat. “Could you hit that garage door opener, Mitch?”
He did and a moment later they were descending on a massive elevator platform once used to move intercontinental ballistic missiles.
“So are you looking for anything special, man? Or do you just want to know if the Pakistanis can detonate the thing without blowing their dicks off?”
“Irene wants a rundown of the technology and power,” Rapp said.
“What about you?”
“Someone tried to steal it. I want to know who.”
“No problem. I’ll bring in some of the forensics guys I work with. Anything else?”
“No,” Rapp said, watching the gray concrete walls slip slowly by.
“You all right, man?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure? Because it’s a beautiful night and we have a cooler full of beer and a stolen A-bomb. It don’t get any better than that.”
CHAPTER 22
NORTH OF ISLAMABAD
PAKISTAN
GRISHA Azarov pulled his hat down his forehead and tilted his face into the upturned collar on his jacket. The sun was gone but the heat was still hovering at thirty-eight degrees Celsius, making his choice of clothing both uncomfortable and likely to attract attention. Fortunately, the private airstrip was all but abandoned at this time of night.
He jogged up the steps of his company’s Bombardier Challenger 650, heading for the back as the pilot closed the door. The interior had been redesigned to his specifications, reducing the number of seats and adding a sofa long enough to sleep on without causing stiffness. He entered the expanded bathroom and closed the door, leaning over the sink and staring into the mirror.
His face was dotted with bandages that a few hours ago had matched his skin tone but were now dark with blood. He began peeling them off, pulling glass from the wounds he hadn’t had time to clean during his escape. None were serious enough to need stitches, though the half-moon slice on the bridge of his nose was deeper than he’d realized. That one had been too close. Less than a centimeter from his right eye.
He couldn’t help but be reminded of the severe acne he’d suffered as a teenager, the damage from which had been repaired during the plastic surgeries he’d undergone before going to work for Maxim Krupin.
The phone lying on the counter next to him came to life with a number that belonged to the president’s secure cell. Azarov considered ignoring the call, but giving into that temptation would be unwise in the extreme. Instead, he inserted a Bluetooth headset and picked up.
“Good evening, sir.”
“What the hell happened, Grisha? My people in Pakistan report that Mitch Rapp is still alive and that he has the weapon.”
“I can’t confirm those reports with certainty, sir. But they seem credible.”
Krupin let out a lengthy string of expletives in Russian. “I should have seen through your false bravado and known you’d fail me.”
It was an entirely predictable revision of their last meeting. Azarov had done nothing to hide his concerns regarding a confrontation with Rapp and had gone so far as to recommend against it. Krupin, though, would never admit to an error and was already shifting the blame. It was always odd to watch these deflections because of the strange honesty to them. Azarov had come to believe that they were less a deliberate reaction to failure than an unconscious one. Krupin saw himself as infallible and lapses in his own judgment tended to cause unbearable cognitive dissonance. Typically, that dissonance was resolved at the expense of one of his underlings.
“My bravado or lack thereof was of no importance,” Azarov said, cleaning his wounds with alcohol. “I never saw Mitch Rapp, though it seems likely that he fired the shot that injured me. He sent his man Scott Coleman into the warehouse and I dealt with the situation.”
Krupin ignored him. “The Pakistanis are demanding the weapon back, but the Americans are delaying. We have to assume they’re examining it.”
“That seems reasonable.”
“I’m not interested in your opinions on this or any other matter, Grisha! I’m interested in your actions. The Americans won’t just be looking at the Pakistani technology, they’ll be looking for clues as to who was behind the attempt to steal it. And unless the Pakistanis can exert sufficient pressure to get it back immediately, it’s almost certain that the our alterations will be discovered.”
Azarov had a growing understanding of Krupin’s activities in Pakistan, but he was still in the dark as to the man’s ultimate goal. What alterations was he referring to?
When he spoke again, Krupin seemed to have recovered the icy façade that he liked to wear. “For the first time in our relationship, you’ve disappointed me, Grisha.”
Azarov pulled the pistol from the holster beneath his left arm and placed it on the counter. It seemed unlikely that Krupin would act rashly where his young enforcer was involved. In the current unpredictable environment, it would be more advantageous to send Azarov to his death in a way that furthered his plans than to summarily execute him. Having said that, it would be a mistake to count on his indispensability as Marius Postan had.
“At this point, I can only offer my apologies, sir. My hope is that despite this setback, your Pakistani operations were successful and that now you have what you want.”
“I do. But with Rapp alive and in possession of the Faisalabad warhead, it’s possible that Irene Kennedy will get a glimpse into my plans.”
“She’s a political appointee,” Azarov said. “Certainly she’s controllable.”
“Not as much as one would expect. We’ve contacted people sympathetic to us in their Congress and found many of them to be afraid of her. Even more so, of Mitch Rapp. That’s one of many reasons he needed to be dealt with. The problem is that your incompetence has tipped him off. He’ll become cautious and retreat.”
Azarov actually laughed out loud at that. “Mr. President, in all likelihood, I’ve killed his primary lieutenant and closest friends. I can tell you with great certainty that a confrontation between myself and Mr. Rapp is now inevitable.”
• • •
Maxim Krupin cut off the speakerphone and looked across his desk at Tarben Chkalov. The powerful oligarch said nothing, instead staring at the speaker with aging eyes.
Krupin found it difficult to hide his anger at having the old bag of bones there. At being forced to consult with this man in affairs of state—the affairs of a country that he had sacrificed everything to control.
But even great autocrats such as France’s Louis XIV had been forced to cater to nobles and religious leaders. While Russia’s people could be drugged with the illusion of power, its oligarchs demanded more tangible rewards. Like stray dogs, they occasionally had to be thrown scraps from his table.
“Irene Kennedy will discover your tampering,” Chkalov said. “She’s many things, but stupid is not one of them.”
Krupin had anticipated the criticism and managed a respectful nod. “The men involved were from a Pakistani terrorist group. I don’t see how this—”
“But Ilya Gusev in South Africa was not. Nor is Grisha. Certainly there were witnesses in Faisalabad. And in the modern society we live in, someone always has a phone with a camera. Even if Grisha can’t be specifically identified, it will be obvious to anyone with eyes that he isn’t Middle Eastern. And are we even certain that Scott Coleman is dead? Rapp went to a great deal of trouble to get him out.”
“The Americans have a sentimental bias against leaving their fallen behind.”
“Perhaps. But if he has survived, I suspect that Grisha’s face is indelibly burned into his mind.”
“What are you suggesting, Tarben?”
Chkalov forced an unconvincingly subservient smile. “I wouldn’t presume to suggest anything, Mr. President. I was merely pointing out that you
r attempt to divert blame to ISIS and other similar groups may be at risk.”
“The Americans are terrified of the Muslims and blinded to all other risks by that fear. They’ll believe that their mainland is under a nuclear threat and will pull back to defend themselves. By the time they realize the truth, it’ll be too late.”
“They would say ’circling the wagons,’ ” the old man said. He was fond of flaunting his mastery of English. “I agree with regard to the American politicians. They both fear the Muslim threat and need it to keep their electorate motivated. Kennedy and Rapp, though, are different. They’re not afraid and they don’t have to worry about elections. Further, they’re as knowledgeable as anyone alive about the groups you are trying to use to blind them. More knowledgeable than even you, perhaps.”
“You overestimate them, Tarben. Kennedy is hemmed in by the increasing dysfunction of the American government and Rapp is nothing more than an assassin. Gifted in that realm admittedly, but hardly sophisticated enough to understand the forces at work here.”
Chkalov just nodded.
CHAPTER 23
SOUTHWESTERN VIRGINIA
U.S.A.
THE dull ring of a knock on the steel door echoed off the walls. Rapp sat up on his cot, looking through the semidarkness at the rusting pipes and crumbling ceiling. During the height of the Cold War, this is where the ICBM missile crews bunked. Now the room was little more than a relic of a largely forgotten conflict.
The only illumination was coming from a single battery-powered light on the floor. There was no functioning power in the room, and the lack of electric heat gave it the feel of a meat locker. Despite that, Maslick was snoring loudly in the top bunk, the fog of his breath rising rhythmically into the still air. For now, his role in this was over. He’d focus on recovery until he was needed again.
The knock came again, this time followed by the sound of the door scraping open.
“Mitch?” Craig Bailer’s voice. But more subdued than normal. “Are you awake?”
