by Vince Flynn
The next sound was hard to mistake—the dull scrape of the front door sliding against an uneven floor. He moved quickly across the room, keeping to the edges where the floorboards had the most support, finally halting next to the apartment’s only entrance.
The door moved slowly inward, finally stopping when the gap was large enough for a person to squeeze through. Rapp remained motionless as a man with an AK-47 entered. A moment later, a second man appeared and carefully pushed the door closed. Now that they were inside, Rapp expected them to spread out—one going for the bedroom while the other cleared the kitchen and bathroom. That didn’t happen.
He watched with momentary confusion as the two men just stood there, crouched and frozen. After a couple seconds, he figured it out. They’d used too much light getting up the stairs and were now waiting for their vision to adjust.
That brought Rapp to an obvious question: What were a couple of amateurs doing creeping around Eric Jesem’s living room at three in the morning?
He stepped forward and slammed his fist into the back of the trailing man’s head, dropping him like a sack of potatoes. The other turned toward the sound, but Rapp twisted the assault rifle from his grip and arced the butt toward his head. He only needed one of them alive for interrogation. Two would just double the chances of a problem.
“No!”
Laleh’s shout was accompanied by her throwing herself in front of the man. Rapp barely avoided caving in the back of her head, redirecting the weapon’s trajectory at the last second.
He flipped it around and slid a finger through the trigger guard before lighting the kerosene lamp. “Do you know them?”
When she didn’t answer, he raised the rifle butt to his shoulder, taking aim at the head of the man behind her.
“Stop!” Laleh said immediately. “They’re my bothers.”
She moved to the unconscious one, rolling him on his back and cradling his head in her lap. Rapp kept the AK trained on the other.
“What are they doing here?”
The man in his sights answered in Arabic. “Coming to save our sister and kill a godless ISIS pig.”
“What did he say?” Rapp said, deciding to keep playing dumb on the language front.
“That they weren’t going to harm you. That they just came to take me home.”
In a lifetime of being lied to, that may have been the least credible one he’d ever heard. Setting aside for a moment the unvarnished hate in the man’s voice, he was rocking from side to side, apparently trying to decide whether running straight into automatic fire was worth the possibility of getting his hands around Rapp’s neck.
“Are they part of the resistance to ISIS?”
“What resistance?” she responded. “They are devout Muslims who welcome the coming caliphate. They were just protecting our family’s honor.”
Rapp tightened the butt on his shoulder and centered the man’s face in his sights. “I’m going to count to three, Laleh. Either you start telling me the truth or you’re going to spend the rest of the night scrubbing your brother’s brains off the wall.”
“Please!” she said, the panic rising in her voice. “They fought when ISIS first came, but they’re doing nothing now. They’re in hiding. We’ve lost. You’ve taken everything from us.”
Rapp lowered the weapon to his hip but kept the barrel lined up on the man. “Whether your brothers are part of it or not, is there an active resistance?”
“No. Not anymore.”
“Tell this animal nothing!” the man said in Arabic. She responded in the same language. “I’m not telling him anything he can’t see with his own eyes, Mohammed. You are no threat to him and his army.”
She switched back to English. “My brothers and the men loyal to him talk. But that’s all they do. Talk.”
It was likely true. The combined forces of the entire world weren’t sure how to fight ISIS. A small group of untrained men huddled in a basement weren’t going to be able to do much more than get themselves killed. With the right mission and the right leadership, though, a compact, inexperienced force might be able to make a difference.
“I’m an American agent tracking nuclear material stolen from Pakistan,” Rapp said, deciding that there was no more time for caution. “I believe that ISIS is going to use that material in an attack and that the attack is being run out of Al-Shirqat.”
The man in front of him clearly understood and looked at Laleh. She shook her head slowly and spoke in Arabic. “I don’t know, Mohammed. He saved me from being burned. And I can tell you that he hasn’t touched me.”
“He’s lying,” her brother responded. “We know all about Eric Jesem. About the things he’s done. He’s not an American agent. Even CIA men have lines they don’t cross.”
“My brother doesn’t believe you’re an American agent,” she said.
“You mean he doesn’t believe that Eric Jesem is an American agent.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What do you know about him? About Jesem?”
This time her brother answered directly. His English wasn’t as good as Laleh’s but it was easily understandable.
“We know that he’s a butcher of women and children,” he said, his eyes scanning the room.
Rapp would have smiled if his lips hadn’t been so badly damaged. Despite no hope of closing the distance between them, the man still seemed to be searching for an opportunity to attack. Not well trained, but motivated. That was better than nothing.
“I had one of my men snap Eric Jesem’s neck and then we stuffed his body down a garbage chute.”
Laleh’s brow knitted for a moment and then she started to understand.
“He asked me what city this was,” she said in Arabic. “And the lamp! He let me hit him in the face over and over before he took it from me. He wanted me to do it! He wanted me to damage his face!”
Her brother just shook his head. “No. He’s clever. We know about him. He’s from a rich family in America. He went to college. Then he came here to kill people who have nothing to do with him. Don’t believe him, Laleh. He’s the devil.”
“Did Eric Jesem speak your language?” Rapp said, switching to flawless Arabic.
They just stared silently up at him.
“Like you say, he was a thirty-two-year-old American who grew up in Colorado, went to college, and then took a job as a Realtor at his father’s company.” Rapp pulled up his shirt, revealing not only the recent damage done by Maslick but years of healed battle wounds: puckered bullet holes, jagged knife scars, and the more precise lines created by surgeons’ scalpels. “Do men like Jesem look like this?”
They were too stunned to respond.
“What’s the name of the general who brought me to the square?”
Laleh finally found her voice. “Mustafa. Ali Mustafa.”
Rapp vaguely recognized the name. Not one of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle, but still high up in his army. Artillery, if he was thinking of the right man.
“Do you know anything about an operation being run out of here by Mustafa? Something big?”
“There’s been talk,” Mohammed said finally. “No details, but we know it has something to do with a facility outside of town. Mustafa brought men there to train. Eric Jesem was one of them.”
“How many men in total?”
“Fifteen. Maybe twenty.”
It seemed like about the right number. Six weapons handled by two-man teams so as not to raise suspicion. Then some backups in case there were problems.
“Do you have access to outside communications?”
“No. The hard lines have been destroyed and the Americans are jamming cell signals.”
Rapp nodded. “Can you get me to that training camp?”
“Yes. It’s not far. But for what reason?”
Rapp tossed the man back his weapon. “To kill as many of the people there as I can.”
CHAPTER 38
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
U.S.A.
IRENE Kennedy sat down at her desk for the first time in days. She’d barely reached for her briefing file when Mike Nash entered waving a manila envelope. It looked distressingly thin.
“You found him?” Kennedy said hopefully.
Nash fell into one of the chairs in front of her and tried to find a comfortable position. She’d purposely chosen furniture with backs too straight and padding too thin in order to discourage long, unproductive meetings. There were some even less comfortable ones in a storage closet that were brought out during visits by members of Congress.
“Not exactly found. But with Claudia’s data to work with, we’ve made progress.”
“I don’t need progress, Mike. I need success.”
“I know. The machine is running, but this guy isn’t exactly an amateur.”
He pulled an eight-by-ten photo from the envelope and placed it on her desk. Grisha Azarov apparently didn’t share Rapp’s uncanny ability to avoid being caught on camera. He was staring straight into the lens as he strode across a stage with a microphone in his hand. The dark hair and sculpted nose were close matches to the composite Nash had created. His skin was more tanned, though, and his eyes leaned a bit more toward Asian. The pinstripe suit he was wearing seemed a bit too large, as though it had been tailored to obscure the physique beneath.
“That’s Azarov—or Filipov, if you prefer—speaking to almost a thousand people at a conference last year in Abu Dhabi.”
“What kind of conference?”
“Extraction industry. This guy is taking the concept of hiding in plain sight to a whole other level. He’s the head of a well-known oil and gas consulting firm that operates all over the globe. His clients include Exxon, BP, and Aramco, just for starters. Hell, they’re so good, even we’ve used them a few times.”
“That would allow him to move around Russia and the Middle East without attracting attention.”
“And he takes advantage of that ability. A lot. Our information on his travels is still spotty, but we have entry and exit dates putting him in Pakistan when Scott was attacked. He flew in on his company jet and was staying in the nicest suite the Islamabad Marriott offers. He has condos in London and New York, but doesn’t seem to have been to either for years. We were able to infiltrate the management companies caretaking them and get people inside, but they didn’t find anything.”
“He must live somewhere.”
“Agreed. His permanent address is listed as the offices of his company in Moscow, but I think we can do better than that.”
He pulled a colorful map of the world from the envelope and unfolded it on her desk.
“This is a graphical representation of his private jet’s trips?” she asked, examining the hundreds of arcing lines between countries and continents.
“Not exactly. We suspect that his plane is putting in a lot of hours empty.”
“He’s trying to throw off anyone who might be watching.”
“Like I said, this guy’s no amateur. But we know he doesn’t fly commercial, so what you’re seeing here is a representation of charter flights coming and going from locations where we could place him and with passengers whose identities we couldn’t verify. Three hundred and twelve in all over the course of five years. Notice anything unusual?”
“There seem to be an unlikely number of flights going to Central America.”
“Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, to be precise. Our statistics guys say that there’s less than a ten percent chance that the pattern is a random occurrence.”
“Home,” she said.
Nash nodded. “We’re assuming Costa Rica, since it’s in the middle. Matching flights in with flights out is time-consuming but a picture’s starting to emerge. Someone’s coming in and staying for anywhere between one week and two months. During those times, Grisha Azarov makes no public appearances.”
“If he returns to Costa Rica, can we track him?”
“I think so. We figure he lands at one of about ten available airstrips and then drives a private car to wherever he lives. He has no visa for any of those countries and no car registered, so we figure he’s got an alias. We’ve got teams watching all the strips, and since he seems to like his first name, we’re going after that. Not the fastest process in Central America, though. A lot of their records are on paper.”
“But right now you have no idea where he is?”
“None. He dropped off the radar after Pakistan. We’ve tried to contact him through one of our companies that’s worked with him in the past, but all we get is that he’s unavailable.”
Kennedy pushed the map away and leaned back in her chair. “I’m not sure this helps us, Mike. Whatever move he’s making, my sense is that it’s imminent. That he won’t go home before his mission is completed.”
“Have you figured out what that mission is?”
“Our analysts have given me a number of scenarios. Too many, in fact. They span from dirty bomb attacks on U.S. cities to multiple nuclear blasts in Israel.”
“Anything catch your eye?”
“The confirmation of Azarov’s identity convinces me that Krupin is behind this. And that honestly makes an attack on the U.S. mainland unlikely. It’s hard to see how he would benefit and it could invite a devastating retaliation. No, what Krupin needs is simpler.”
“To shore up his position at home,” Nash offered.
“Exactly. His power over the Russian people is slipping. He has to give them some economic relief and he has to do it quickly.”
“Well, nuking someone isn’t going to do much to get his country out of the toilet.”
“No, but creating chaos in the Middle East would.”
“Oil prices,” Nash said, lacing his hands on top of his head and trying again to find a comfortable position in the chair. “I can see that crazy Russian bastard pulling something like that.”
“At this point, he has very little to lose.”
“How, though?”
“He’s already given us part of the answer: ISIS. They’ve proven their effectiveness against failed nations, but places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE are different. They’re protected by either their stability, their military capability, or both.
“So nuke Dubai, Cairo, Riyadh, Tehran, and Jeddah. Throw in Tel Aviv, just to get the shit storm really rolling. Then ISIS moves in and oil prices spike to record levels. Krupin would have the money to pay off every corrupt bureaucrat from Moscow to Siberia and to drown the average citizen in new entitlements.”
Kennedy didn’t respond, instead pulling off her reading glasses and setting them on the desk.
“You don’t agree, Irene?”
“I don’t disagree. Anything is possible at this point. But Krupin is a sociopath, not a madman. He’s not motivated by God or illusions of world domination. He just wants to maintain power. Your scenario has so much potential for blowback. Retaliation from the West, unforeseen economic consequences. Even an increase in terrorist attacks inside Russia. It seems to me that he’d do as little as possible to get the effect he needs.”
“So Saudi Arabia. That’s where you get biggest bang for your buck.”
She nodded noncommittally.
“It’s frustrating, isn’t it, Irene? I have this nagging feeling that Mitch knows the answer to all our questions, but he has no way of getting us the information.”
She had the same feeling, though her confidence was beginning to falter. Earlier that day, she’d had a conversation with Joe Maslick in which he admitted to downplaying the beating he’d given Rapp. Further, analysis of satellite images depicting Rapp’s “rescue” from the transport van suggested that he’d fallen down a fairly steep incline. Whether that fall had been caused by a bullet to the back was a question of significant debate. The bottom line was that there was a very real possibility that Mitch Rapp was dead or incapacitated.
The phone on Kennedy’s desk buzzed and the voice of one of her assistants came over the speaker. “I have General Templeton retur
ning your call on a secure line.”
Nash’s eyebrows rose at the name of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
“Put him through.”
She pushed a button and put him on speaker. “Thank you for getting for getting back to me so quickly, James.”
“Not a problem, Irene. What can I do for you?”
“It’s my understanding that you’ve been briefed on the items that recently went missing from Pakistan?”
“Yes.”
“We have an operative who we believe has infiltrated ISIS and is now somewhere in territory held by them. It’s possible that he has information on those items and how they’re going to be used.”
“I see. And how does that involve me?”
“I want to recommend to the president that we shut down our electronic jamming operations in the area, and I’d like your support.”
There was a stunned silence over the line. “Let me get this straight, Irene . . . You want me to let the most technologically sophisticated terrorist group in history plug back into the grid because you think one of your guys might have infiltrated ISIS and could have useful information? Look, you know I have nothing but respect for you, but are you out of your mind?”
“The operative I’m talking about is Mitch, James.”
This time the silence went on for quite a bit longer. Finally, the general spoke again. “I’ll get behind eight hours, Irene. Not a minute more.”
CHAPTER 39
AL-SHIRQAT
IRAQ
THE wind had continued to strengthen and now seemed to be steady at fifteen knots, with gusts coming in above thirty. The darkness and the hiss of dust blasting the surrounding structures created a disorienting environment of sensory deprivation. It was all Rapp could do not to wander off the street and run into one of the buildings lining either side.
Laleh’s directions had been impressively detailed, but following them in the prevailing conditions was challenging. A set of headlights appeared at the far end of the street and approached. He shaded his eyes, memorizing every detail of the newly illuminated terrain—the bullet-ridden stone façades, the narrow alleys, the blackening corpses hanging from a disused power line.
