by Vince Flynn
Rapp slowed as his white-hot rage faded to a dull red.
A few years back, he’d forced Nash to take credit for something Rapp himself had done, turning him into a hero. He’d received the Distinguished Intelligence Cross, the fawning attention of Washington’s elites, and an enormous amount of media coverage. The unexpected celebrity had made it impossible for him to continue as a clandestine operative. Through no fault of his own, he suddenly found himself shut out of the career he’d built.
He’d been pissed as hell and, in retrospect, probably had a right to be. At the time, Rapp had told himself he’d done it for the man’s own good. That he was losing his edge and had a family that needed him. He’d convinced himself that he was protecting his old friend. But was that really his decision to make? And had his motivations really been so pure? It had been clear that someone was going to have to take credit for what had been done and Rapp didn’t want it to be him. The problem was that he hadn’t just fled the spotlight like he’d been doing his entire life; he’d shoved his friend into it in his place.
Rapp came to a stop, listening to the forest around him for any indication of his target. But there wasn’t anything. When properly motivated, Nash could apparently still move his fat ass up a hill.
He started forward again but found that his pace had slowed even more. He thought back to a particularly ugly fight he and Nash had gotten into years ago. It had ended up with Rapp leaving the man lying on the shoulder of the road.
Now he couldn’t even remember what they were arguing about.
He tried to refocus on the task at hand, reminding himself that the penalty of taking Mike Nash for just another manicured bureaucrat could very well be death. But the focus wouldn’t come. Only the memories.
The hard-to-face truth was that he’d made Nash the man he was today. He’d sent the Marine to the executive floor kicking and screaming. Once there, what had he expected him to do? Nash always excelled. In school. In sports. In combat. Why wouldn’t he examine his new battlefield and calculate how to win on it? Why wouldn’t he recognize that Washington was an operating environment that didn’t reward loyalty and courage? It rewarded treachery and self-interest.
Adapt or die.
As Rapp slipped through the trees, he reflected on the things Nash had said to him back in that clearing. Was it possible there was a kernel of truth in it? Over the course of their relationship, they’d probably disagreed more than they agreed, but Rapp had always taken the man seriously. Sometimes more seriously than he was willing to admit.
Son of a bitch.
Above all things, Rapp hated doubt. It was almost as bad as regret on his scale of bullshit wastes of time. But there he was. Walking through the jungle wallowing in it. Setting a pace designed to ensure that he never caught his target.
By God, he’d make Nash suffer, though. He’d keep running him up this hill until the forest opened onto farmland and forced the man to double back. He’d keep shooting at random, suspending the man at the edge of panic. Then, eventually, he’d collect Coleman and the guys and just slink away. Nash would stay hidden in the woods—probably for days—starving his ass off, getting eaten by bugs, and hopefully ingesting some amoeba that would cause truly catastrophic diarrhea. Eventually he’d emerge, filthy, unshaven, and dehydrated. Separated from his Agency support and his family. Not knowing whom he could trust.
When he finally slipped back to the United States, he’d be Kennedy’s problem. Maybe she’d ship him off to surveil a Siberian weather station for the rest of his career. Or shove him in a forgotten warehouse full of Cold War intelligence reports in need of filing.
The sunlight intensified just ahead, indicating a break in the trees. Rapp turned to skirt its edges before spotting a figure near the middle.
Nash.
He hesitated for a moment, but then moved into a position where he’d be visible but still have reasonable cover. Nash had taken no such precautions. He was out in the open with his gun hanging loosely from his hand.
“You’re even slower than I thought,” Rapp said.
“I didn’t figure there was any hurry. Just putting off the inevitable, right? I’m not going to let you push me up this hill until I drop. I’d like to die with a little more dignity than that. If I’m going down, I’ll damn well do it with a shirt free of puke and the crease in my pants still holding.”
“Whatever works for you.”
“It’s been a wild ride, huh, Mitch? The things we’ve done? The things we’ve seen? Even if we could talk about it, no one would ever believe it.”
Rapp just shrugged.
“I stopped to tell you something, man. And there’s no reason for me to lie anymore, right? So, you should take this seriously. None of this shit matters. Just Claudia, Anna, Irene, and Scott and the guys. That’s it. Everyone else is just waiting to stab you in the back. That’s what I’ve learned traveling the world’s conference rooms. We all die and, in a few years, no one will remember we even existed. Nothing we do means anything.”
“Do you have a point?”
“Yeah. I do. Make peace with the president, Mitch. Even you and Irene can’t stand against the storm that’s coming. I know you don’t want to join him, but at least be smart enough to back away. And while I know you haven’t listened to me much over the years, you should think about what I’m telling you. It’s good advice.”
He raised his sidearm until the barrel was tucked under his chin.
“Mike! No!”
But it was too late. The gun sounded and he collapsed to the jungle floor.
EPILOGUE
WEST OF MANASSAS
VIRGINIA
USA
RAPP increased the speed of the rental car’s windshield wipers and then notched up the air-conditioning. Through the mist, the road outside felt strangely foreign. He’d driven it a thousand times before but now he was a trespasser in his own home. In his own country.
He’d flown into a private airport in Maryland a few hours ago, using a private jet Claudia had rented through a web of offshore corporations. The passport was one of the fakes from the safe house in Riyadh and the credit card number he’d used for the car belonged to a Slovenian export business.
He was starting to wonder if he really existed. Was he the patriotic Agency man? The Iraqi national renting a nondescript Airbnb in Riyadh? The South African living with his brand-new family among the vineyards of Franschhoek?
Maybe none of them. Maybe one day all the fronts, aliases, and lies would collapse and he’d find out there was nothing behind them. His quest for anonymity would prove so successful that he’d become a ghost before his time.
When he pressed the button on his remote, the gate leading into his neighborhood didn’t respond. He had to get out and open it manually, unable to shake the idea that it was sending him a message.
The rain was already starting to soak through his suit as he slid back behind the wheel and pulled through. A few blocks later, he passed a parked GMC Yukon that immediately pulled out to follow him. Deeper into the subdivision, he could see the glow of the spotlights illuminating the walls of his house, but that wasn’t his objective.
He pulled into what had once been Mike Nash’s driveway and threw open the door again. This time he put on a fedora and raincoat before walking hunched toward the house’s front door. It would be hard for anyone else in the neighborhood to make out much more than his outline, but even if they did, the coat and hunched shoulders would keep him from being recognized. As would the fact that, as far as the world was concerned, he was dead.
They would, however, recognize Irene Kennedy, whose boots he could hear overtaking him from behind. No one would ask questions, though. Every one of them had spent enough years in the business to know better.
Kennedy caught him on the porch but neither looked at the other nor spoke. He knocked on the door and a few shouts from inside preceded the beat of someone coming down the hallway. Shoes on the wood floor he himself had walked acr
oss so many times before. The entry light that he and Rory had been forced to repair after an overly spirited lacrosse session came on a moment later.
Maggie opened the door, holding her two-year-old son in one arm. She took a hesitant step backward when the light caught Rapp’s face.
“Oh my God! You’re alive!”
She threw her arms around him, crushing a writhing Chuck between them for a moment before pulling back. “What happened? What are you doing here? Mike’s—”
She suddenly fell silent, taking in his expression and then looking at Kennedy standing silently next to him.
Maggie Nash was not a stupid woman. Very much the opposite. And she’d lived with a former Marine and CIA operative long enough for her razor-sharp mind to absorb a great deal about the business. More than was necessary to determine the purpose of their visit.
For a moment, she looked like she was going to collapse. Her arms lost their strength and Rapp took Chuck while Kennedy reached out to steady her.
“Let’s go inside,” she said gently.
By the time Rapp had closed the door, Maggie was standing under her own power again. She turned and walked stiffly down the hall to a cluttered home office she used when she didn’t want to make the trek downtown.
He and Kennedy stood by motionless as Mike Nash’s widow cleared files and children’s toys from two chairs. She was a take-charge woman and this was her way of preparing for what she knew was coming.
They sat and she positioned herself behind her desk, back straight and chin thrust slightly forward.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Chuck squirmed a bit when he heard the unfamiliar tone of his mother’s voice. It was as though he understood that his life—his future—had just been transformed.
“I’m sorry,” Kennedy said.
Maggie stared straight forward for a few seconds, fixated on the door behind them. “What happened?”
“He came to meet me in Uganda,” Rapp said. “I can’t talk about why, but we couldn’t trust comms. We were ambushed by a group splintered off from Gideon Auma’s militia. It turned into a running fight through the jungle. We were badly outnumbered and had to split up. Mike went with Bruno and Mas—”
“Bruno and Mas,” she interrupted. “Scott and his people are alive, too?”
Rapp nodded and continued. “The people chasing us didn’t see us split up and they all came after me, Wick, and Scott. We took out a lot of them, but they were loaded up on drugs and no matter how many we killed, they just kept coming. We were conserving ammo with nowhere to go when Mike and the guys came in behind them and saved our asses.” He fell silent for a moment. They’d worked out the entire battle in gory detail in case she or any of the kids should ask at some future date, but now wasn’t the time.
“The bottom line is that I’d be dead if it hadn’t been for him, Maggie. So would Scott and Wick. We owe him our lives.”
* * *
“I’ll call you tomorrow, Maggie,” Irene Kennedy said over the sound of the rain pounding the porch’s eave. “We can talk about arrangements. If you need anything between now and then, you have my personal number. It doesn’t matter what time it is. Use it.”
“Thank you,” Maggie responded, in a voice that sounded completely empty. She’d run out of tears a while ago, but her eyes were still red when they turned toward Rapp. He nodded in her direction, but she didn’t react at all. Undoubtedly, she was thinking that it should be him dead out there. That her husband had no business skulking around the Ugandan jungle. That like so many deaths over the years, this was the fault of Mitch Rapp.
And she was probably right.
When the door closed, he and Kennedy stepped back into the rain and started down the driveway.
“I don’t want to be on the ground here any longer than I have to be,” Rapp said. “But I told Claudia I’d get a few things for her at the house. Can I offer you a drink?”
Kennedy wiped at her face, but it was hard to know if it was rain or tears.
“You can offer me a few.”
More from this Series
American Assassin
Book 1
Kill Shot
Book 2
Transfer of Power
Book 3
The Third Option
Book 4
Separation of Power
Book 5
Executive Power
Book 6
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
#1 New York Times bestselling author Vince Flynn (1966–2013) created one of contemporary fiction’s most popular heroes: CIA counterterrorist agent Mitch Rapp, featured in thirteen of Flynn’s acclaimed political thrillers. All of his novels are New York Times bestsellers, including his stand-alone debut novel, Term Limits.
Kyle Mills is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty-one political thrillers, including Total Power, Lethal Agents and Red War for Vince Flynn and The Patriot Attack for Robert Ludlum. He initially found inspiration from his father, an FBI agent and former Interpol director, and still draws on his contacts in the intelligence community to give his books such realism. Avid outdoor athletes and world travelers, he and his wife split their time between Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Granada, Spain. Visit his website at KyleMills.com or connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @KyleMillsAuthor.
SimonandSchuster.com
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Vince-Flynn
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Kyle-Mills
EMILYBESTLERBOOKS.COM
@EmilyBestler @EmilyBestler
Novels by Vince Flynn
The Last Man
Kill Shot
American Assassin
Pursuit of Honor
Extreme Measures
Protect and Defend
Act of Treason
Consent to Kill
Memorial Day
Executive Power
Separation of Power
The Third Option
Transfer of Power
Term Limits
And by Kyle Mills
Total Power
Lethal Agent
Red War
Enemy of the State
Order to Kill
The Survivor
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Jacket des
ign by Ervin Serrano
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Author photograph by Peter Hurley
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN 978-1-9821-6488-1
ISBN 978-1-9821-6490-4 (ebook)
