by Vince Flynn
He turned it on and confirmed that there was no signal. A lot of the area’s cellular capacity had been taken out in the fighting and what was left was being jammed by the U.S. military. A quick scroll through Jesem’s emails and texts turned up nothing of interest. Phone records were completely blank. It was likely that Marcus Dumond back at Langley could dig up all kinds of useful information on the device, but Rapp’s technological skills were limited to the basics.
There was a box under one of the chairs and he went through it, finding Jesem’s U.S. passport, a few personal effects, and some porn. Not exactly a treasure trove of actionable intel. Nothing about his life, his mission in Pakistan, or ISIS’s plans for the fissile material they had stolen. And Rapp still didn’t know where the hell he was.
The drawers in the bathroom contained little more than a toothbrush and some paste. He closed the warped door as best he could and leaned into a cracked mirror. The face staring back at him was about what he’d expected: split lips, blackened eyes, and a battered nose beneath a stitched forehead.
It wasn’t as bad as it had been when Maslick originally did the job, though. One of Rapp’s many strengths was his ability to heal. In this case that talent was working against him. The comic-book puffiness around his eyes had already subsided appreciably and the discoloration where his cheeks emerged from his beard was fading.
Worse, though, was the nose. His looked nothing like Eric Jesem’s and Maslick had been forced to break it to obscure that fact. Unfortunately, the woman who had done such a thorough job cleaning up Rapp’s wounds had done an equally thorough job straightening his nose. Another few days and anyone who knew Jesem would start to see through the damage.
His experience with purposely injuring himself was pretty limited and he looked around the bathroom, trying to find something he could use. The toilet seat seemed promising initially, but it turned out to be too light and flimsy. The sink also captured his attention for a moment, but the wall overhung it in a way that would limit his momentum. And then there was the issue of explaining why his face was getting worse instead of better.
A moment later, the solution to his problems kicked open the bathroom door. He ducked instinctively and the battery-powered lamp went arcing over his head, slamming into the wall above an empty towel rack. The young woman pulled it back for another attempt and Rapp started to recognize the opportunity she represented.
When she swung again, he only partially blocked the blow, allowing the lamp base to land a painful blow to the right side of his face. It lacked the knee-shaking force of one of Maslick’s fists, but it was a step in the right direction.
Rapp slipped past her and into the main room to give himself space to maneuver. She didn’t hesitate, chasing after him and taking another vicious swing. Hate and rage had transformed her beautiful features into something that would have startled even Stan Hurley—a man who had done hate and rage better than almost anyone.
Instead of retreating, Rapp moved closer. The shaft of the lamp hit him in the left eye, knocking him back a few steps. He blinked a few times to confirm that he could still see out of it as she came at him with an ear-splitting scream. This would be the money shot and he had to admit that he wasn’t looking forward to it. A surge of adrenaline coursed through him when he turned and let the lamp hit him square in his broken nose.
“Fuck!” he shouted, staggering back as blood began pouring into his beard.
She pressed her advantage, undoubtedly thinking she was on the verge of finishing him off. This time he caught the lamp and swept her feet out from under her. She landed flat on her back on the concrete floor, knocking the wind from her lungs.
Rapp threw the lamp into a corner and went back into the bathroom to examine his face. No chance anymore of anyone differentiating his nose from Jesem’s. In fact, it was hard to recognize the thing in the center of his face as a nose at all. If he managed to survive long enough to get back to the States, Irene Kennedy was going to be writing a serious check to the Agency’s plastic surgeons.
He shoved some toilet paper in his nostrils to stop the bleeding and passed back through the door. The woman had made it to her knees and she looked up at him. The beating she’d just doled out had clearly done nothing to diminish her burning hatred.
“Do you speak English?” he asked, unwilling to reveal his language skills.
“If you touch me, I’ll kill you.”
Not only did she speak English, she spoke it pretty well.
“What do you say we call a temporary truce? Dinner should be ready.”
He retreated into the kitchen and came out with the Mexican chicken. She rose to her feet, but seemed unsure what to do. Undoubtedly she was wondering why she hadn’t been raped the moment she’d hit the bed.
“It’s drugged,” she pronounced.
He shoved a heaping spoonful into his mouth and then held the package out to her. She took a hesitant step forward and then snatched it from his hand. He watched as she wolfed it down like she hadn’t eaten in a week—which was probably the case.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“I don’t have to talk to you,” she said, trying to get the last piece of chicken from the bottom of the container.
“You might want to think about your situation a little more carefully.”
“If you come near me, I’ll kill you.”
“You already said that. Tell you what. I saw a package of Asian beef in there. Answer a few simple questions and I’ll make it for you. Now, what’s your name?”
She backed away a few steps. “Laleh.”
“Are you from this area, Laleh?”
“Yes.”
“Where are we?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
“What city? What country?”
Her eyes narrowed as though she thought she was somehow being tricked. “Al-Shirqat, Iraq.”
Rapp nodded silently. North-central Iraq. Dead in the middle of ISIS-held territory.
CHAPTER 36
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
U.S.A.
“YOU can go right in, Dr. Kennedy.”
“Thank you, Gloria,” she said, passing through a door that led directly into the Oval Office. Predictably, President Alexander was on the phone, but he stood and pointed to a chair in front of his desk. A small table next to it contained a steaming cup of tea.
She immediately recognized his conversation as a meaningless political strategy session and tuned it out. It was much more interesting to just watch the man as he twirled a pencil across the back of his knuckles and tried to hide his impatience.
Joshua Alexander was barely over fifty, but his brown hair was quickly turning gray. The dimpled smile and playful eyes that had so effectively ingratiated him with voters were still there, though. More importantly, he had proved to be something of a backroom realist. He knew what needed to be done to keep the country safe and while he tended to dislike being directly involved, he was often willing to look the other way. In the end, it was probably the best she could hope for from any politician.
Alexander finally managed to extricate himself from the call and laid the handset in its cradle.
“Irene. You look like shit,” he said, and then caught himself. “I’m sorry. That was rude, wasn’t it? How’s Scott doing?”
“Much improved, thank you for asking.”
“Normally I’d take that to mean you’re finally going to get some sleep. But you never call emergency meetings with me to talk about how well everything’s going.”
“I’m afraid not, sir.”
“Look, I’m sorry, but you’ve only got five minutes. I have the Turkish ambassador coming in and I don’t have to tell you the mess they’re dealing with.”
“I understand, sir. I’ll get directly to the point. We’ve learned that the fissile material missing from the Pakistani warhead we examined isn’t an isolated incident.”
“What do you mean not ’a
n isolated incident’?”
“We have confirmation that a total of six warheads have been compromised.”
Alexander just sat there for a moment, staring at her. “Do you know who has it?”
“We think ISIS, but it may be more complicated than that.”
“ISIS! Now hold on, Irene. You’re telling me that the most violent bunch of psychopaths to walk the earth in the last five hundred years have the fuel to build six nuclear weapons?”
“I’m afraid so, sir.”
“Can they do it? Do they have the resources?”
“On their own, it’s doubtful. Building a weapon would take sophisticated materials, expertise, and machining capability—most of which has been destroyed in the area they control.”
“Dirty bombs, then.”
“That would be well within their capability. They could also sell it—to other terrorist groups, to the Iranians, or any other country interested in building a nuclear capability.”
Alexander’s secretary knocked and poked her head in. “Sir, the Turkish—”
“Reschedule him, Gloria.”
“You’re booked until eleven thirty this evening, Mr. President. I—”
“Then tell him midnight!”
“Yes sir,” she said, immediately withdrawing and closing the door.
“I’m afraid there’s another complication,” Kennedy said when they were alone again.
“Another complication? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“We have mounting evidence of Russian involvement.”
“Krupin? Why would he get mixed up in something like this? He has personal control over the world’s second largest nuclear arsenal—something he reminds me about every time we talk. He doesn’t need to steal fissile material from the Pakistanis.”
“Our people have done a full analysis of the decoy fuel canisters they found in the warhead. They’ve also been in touch with the Pakistani engineers examining the five other compromised weapons. All the containers appear identical. The metals originated in China, but evidence is strong that they were manufactured in a Russian facility. One controlled by the government.”
“And how was that determined?”
“Microscopic pollen and industrial soot found in the welds.”
“That’s all you have?”
“No, sir. The man who attacked Scott Coleman appears to be a former Russian soldier who disappeared over a decade ago.”
“Can I assume you have him in custody?”
“That would be an incorrect assumption.”
“Then you’re going off prints and DNA?”
“I’m afraid not, sir. Scott identified him from a photo.”
“So you have a clear photo of the man?”
“We had to digitally enhance it to account for age and plastic surgery.”
He just stared over the Resolute Desk at her. “And let me guess. Craig Bailer is the man who examined the nuke.”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“To summarize, then, we have a guy who used to work on cars in your motor pool saying that some dust in a Pakistani warhead looks Russian.”
“Sir, Eric has PhDs in—”
Alexander held up a hand, silencing her. “Please, Irene. I’m the one who approved the funding for his little playhouse out there in Virginia. But what do you want me to do, mass our military on the Russian border? Imagine this with me for a moment. Eric Bailer testifying to the UN about Siberian pollen while spitting tobacco into an empty beer can. Then, to corroborate his story, you pull out a picture of a Russian agent that you admit you Photoshopped the hell out of.”
“I understand your position—”
“Do you? Do you really?”
“The intel is solid, sir.”
“That’s what scares the shit out of me, Irene. I know you wouldn’t bring this to me if you didn’t believe in it.”
He pushed his chair back and folded his arms across his chest. “Krupin’s a card-carrying sociopath, and he’s backed himself into a corner. His economy’s cratering and he’s not going to be able to keep his people distracted with pointless military adventures for much longer. He knows that better than anybody. And he also knows that if he ever loses his grip on power, someone’s going to either throw him in prison or put a bullet in the back of his head.”
Alexander was exactly right about his Russian counterpart. Most Americans worried about Russian strength, but the real thing to fear was its weakness. Russia had lost its empire and was now being further punished by low energy prices and economic sanctions. Krupin, despite his posturing in Russia’s state-controlled media, was a desperate man. So much so that the CIA had actually quietly helped him over the past few years. Such was the tangled web that made up her world. While having a ruthless dictator running roughshod over Eastern Europe was less than ideal, a power vacuum was the surest way to chaos.
“How does getting involved in something like this help him, Irene? What’s his play?”
“We can only speculate at this point, Mr. President.”
“Then do it.”
“As you say, his grip on power is slipping, and the reason for that is almost entirely economic.”
“But how does giving ISIS the ability to nuke Chicago improve his position?”
“I’m not sure Chicago is the goal. There’s no question that ISIS wants to draw the U.S. into a fight, but their primary goals are regional. Given this kind of capability, we think it’s likely that their strategy would be to strike within the confines the Middle East.”
“So Krupin nukes Riyadh, Tehran, Tel Aviv, and God knows what else. He denies any involvement and then sits back while ISIS rolls across the world’s main energy-producing region.”
“That would certainly accomplish his goals. Oil prices would go to hundreds of dollars a barrel and the major world economies would be shaken to their foundation. Russia would become both extremely wealthy and extremely powerful because of its reserves. But I wonder if he would need to go that far? He wants high prices, but the kind of destruction you’re talking about could blow back on him. Particularly with respect to his oligarchs, who have diverse interests all over the world.”
“Then what?”
“We’re still working on that problem, sir. The Middle East is so fragile right now, it wouldn’t take a great deal to tip it. If a few of the more established governments fell, it’s likely that we would see a domino effect.”
“Like the Arab Spring.”
“Yes, sir. But on a much more disruptive scale.”
“What do we do, Irene? Have you created some kind of action plan?”
“Mitch is working on tracking the material.”
“Working on it how?”
“He’s posing as an American ISIS recruit.”
“Has he found anything?”
“We aren’t certain.”
“What do you mean, you’re not certain?”
“We don’t actually know where he is at this moment. We assume in ISIS-controlled Iraq, but we haven’t been able to verify that.”
“Are you certain he’s even alive?”
She picked up the tea mug and let the ceramic warm her hands. “Certain? No, sir. But we have every reason to believe he is.”
“Why?”
“Because he always has been before.”
CHAPTER 37
AL-SHIRQAT
IRAQ
RAPP tried to curl into a more comfortable position on the worn mattress, but finally had to admit that there was no hope. Between the burns on his back and the damage Maslick had done, he’d probably be better off trying to sleep standing up.
Not that it was just the pain keeping him awake. It was also thoughts of Pakistan and his failure there. That fissile material was in the wild because he’d allowed himself to lose focus and be lured to South Africa. The question now was what he was going to do about it.
Options were limited. The most obvious was to convince the Iraqi general to put him back on his team. U
nfortunately, that was easier said than done. Rapp would have to prove his physical abilities in front of witnesses, and the only way he could think to do that was to find the biggest, meanest son of a bitch in town and pick a fight with him.
As plans went, though, it was complete crap. For all he knew, Eric Jesem couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag. Winning could easily blow his cover and end with him enjoying a starring role in the next ISIS execution video. A lot of risk for not much hope of reward.
His second option was to figure out a way to contact Kennedy. Maybe she had some intel that could help him. Hell, maybe he could just bring down a wrath-of-God bombing raid on the city and flatten everything taller than a curb. The problems with that plan were even worse. With the U.S. military jamming, there was no way to get a line out and he had no way of knowing if the fissile material was even within a thousand miles of Al-Shirqat.
In the other room, Laleh murmured something in her sleep. He’d left her on the floor near the kitchen with a wool blanket and a full stomach. She’d answered a few of his questions but turned out to be the master of the reluctant one-word response.
Building trust between them could turn out to be harder than securing the missing fissile material. Just because she hated ISIS didn’t necessarily mean that she had any love for Uncle Sam. It was entirely possible that she despised the idea of America even more than the reality of the men tearing her world apart. He’d seen it a hundred times before.
A nearly inaudible click sounded in the front room and Rapp raised his head from Jesem’s filthy pillow. The rhythm of the girl’s breathing continued, just loud enough to be heard over the howl of the wind outside. He was starting to settle back in when the creak of ancient wood reached him.
Rapp rolled out of bed and padded silently to the bedroom’s empty doorway. A sliver of desert moonlight gleamed around the old towel hanging over the window, making it possible to see the hazy outline of Laleh on the floor but not much else.
