by Vince Flynn
There was a quiet click and Gould pressed a hand against the rusted steel at the back of the cavern. It swung inward, revealing dim red emergency lighting beyond.
Rapp adjusted Hurley’s Kimber .45 holstered in the small of his back and activated his radio again. “We’re about to enter. Figure ten minutes to get to the mansion.”
“Roger that,” Coleman responded.
“Stan?” Rapp said.
The muttered response was barely intelligible. “Waiting, waiting, and more waiting.”
It wasn’t what Rapp wanted to hear. They needed Hurley to pinpoint Obrecht’s location in the building. A room-by-room search was not part of their quick-in, quick-out plan.
“Roger that. Do what you can, Stan. We’re moving.”
CHAPTER 20
ROME
ITALY
ONCE again, Allah had blessed their enterprise. Despite a forecast for rain, the sun was in full force, with only a few distant clouds to obscure it.
Kabir Gadai strolled casually along the gravel walkway, led by a leashed Labrador retriever puppy. He’d purchased it only a few hours ago and was already looking forward to putting its dead body in a dumpster as soon as this was over. Westerners’ affinity for these filthy creatures was inexplicable, but not acknowledging that affinity would be stupid. Nearly everyone who passed looked down at the animal and smiled. More important, Isabella Accorso had two Labradors of her own—the latest in an unbroken series of similar dogs going back to her childhood.
The park was long and narrow, bordered on the left by a busy Roman road and on the right by the ongoing excavation of an ancient square. Gadai examined the columns and crumbing walls that recalled a time when the Italians ruled the known world. Later Catholicism would take hold and the people of this region would embark on the Crusades, a genocidal rampage against the followers of Mohammed. The same people who were now so critical of violence had burned his people at the stake, imprisoned them in unimaginably cruel conditions, and forced them to endure tortures unparalleled in their creativity and savageness.
Now the Americans were sending their Christian soldiers marching across the Middle East in an effort to remake it in the name of a false faith that they themselves seemed largely uninterested in. They would never understand what it was to have God in one’s heart—for Him to be part of their very being. For the Americans, the Creator was nothing more than an occasional convenience. A being to be called on in difficult times and to be briefly acknowledged on public holidays.
“ETA one minute,” the voice said over his Bluetooth headset. “Her preferred position is fully open.”
Gadai acknowledged the message with a barely perceptible nod.
Conveniently, Accorso ate lunch at the same time as her daughter. On clear days like this one, she left her office at noon and came to this park to eat a sandwich brought from home. There were multiple benches to choose from, but she was biased toward the one closest to her building. If it wasn’t available, she would select the next in line.
Her daughter, Bianca, was even more predictable. She sat on the same low concrete wall at the front of her school every day. In the time they had been watching her, even the order of the people she ate with hadn’t varied. An example of the inviolable social hierarchy that all adolescents adhered to.
He spotted the blond hair and dark coat of his target just as the puppy found something of interest at the base of a garbage can. His first instinct was to jerk the animal away, but instead he paused until it was ready to move on. The bench Accorso had selected was visible to him now, and it was still completely empty. Again, Allah had blessed him.
He started toward her, setting his pace so that they would reach the bench at the same time.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Gadai said, stopping in front of it. “Were you going to sit here?”
Fortunately Accorso spoke fluent English—a prerequisite for her job administering contracts and trusts for her law firm.
Like the others, she barely noticed him, instead beaming at the dog. “What’s his name?”
“Her, actually. And I don’t know yet. She’s just Puppy for now.”
“I was going to eat lunch,” she said, pointing at the bench. “Feel free to join me. There’s plenty of room.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
They both sat and she leaned forward, rubbing the excited dog’s head. It nipped at her leg, and instead of pulling back, she laughed. “I have two just like her at home. Older now, though. You forget how cute they are at this age. Like children.”
It was all going exactly as planned. While he’d always been quite successful with women, striking up a conversation with one on a park bench was an unpredictable enterprise. If the attention was unwelcome, their interaction could cause her to move on. Or worse, it could attract the notice of people walking past. The animal solved all those issues.
“Here,” Gadai said, pulling out his phone. “Let me show you something.”
The woman assumed he was going to show her a photo of the puppy and frowned when the screen came to life. “I’m sorry, what is that?”
He leaned into her so he could speak quietly. “It’s a video of your daughter Bianca taken through a rifle scope.”
She froze, her expression turning from confusion to recognition and then to terror.
“Smile,” Gadai said, slipping the phone back in his jacket.
She began to stammer like some half-wit and he leaned into her ear again. “I said smile.”
She forced the corners of her mouth upward, still trying to get intelligible words out. “I . . . What . . .”
“Be silent and listen to me very carefully. I have no desire to see your daughter harmed. It can only attract attention to me and my people. Whether she lives her life never knowing this happened or dies today is entirely up to you.”
“But what do you want? I don’t have—”
“Silence!” he said in a sharp whisper. Still, the people passing by paid little attention. To the degree anyone looked in their direction, it was to admire the dog playfully attacking Accorso’s shoe.
“Your firm administers a set of files I’m interested in.”
“We administer many files. How—”
“This particular client would have made an unusual request. He would have asked you to send files out over the Internet in the event you didn’t hear from him on a particular schedule.”
She didn’t respond, but the subtle shift in her expression told him everything he needed to know.
“You’re familiar with this arrangement?”
“Yes.”
“Then return to your office. Load the files and any instructions you were given onto a thumb drive.”
“Thumb drive,” she repeated numbly.
“That’s right, Isabella. You’re doing well. This will all be over soon.” He pointed to a hotel across the street. “Bring the files to me there. Room two hundred. It’s an easy number to remember. Repeat it back to me.”
“Two hundred.”
“Very good. Do it quickly, Isabella. Your daughter’s break from class won’t last much longer, and my man has orders not to let her out of his sight. If I don’t call him off by the time she gets up to go back to class, he will kill her. Do you understand?”
The woman’s eyes were fixed and a tear had formed in the corner of one of them, but she managed to nod.
“Then go.”
She broke from her trance and stood, walking unsteadily toward her law firm’s building.
The dog bounded after her, but Gadai gripped the leash firmly. He, too, would have liked to follow. The uncertainty—and indeed danger—of sending her back to her office unaccompanied was an unacceptable risk in his opinion. But Taj’s orders had been clear.
After a few more moments he rose, glancing at his watch. Just enough time to get rid of the filthy beast before picking up his room key.
CHAPTER 21
NEAR LAKE CONSTANCE
SWITZERLAND
<
br /> SCOTT Coleman came over the top of a rocky outcropping and leapt to the steep slope below. His thighs burned and his heart pounded powerfully in his chest as he half-ran, half-skidded down twenty yards of loose dirt.
“Approaching your position,” he said, making sure he didn’t sound out of breath. Despite a training program designed and monitored by a soulless Norwegian coach, he was feeling the relentless grade and the weight of his pack. The passage of time was hard on men in his profession. Better than the alternative, though.
“Roger that, Scott. We were wondering what had happened to you.” One of Wicker’s veiled jabs. See how he felt when he was pushing fifty.
The clearing he entered was probably only thirty feet in diameter, bordered with dense trees choked with even denser bushes. McGraw was in a tree on the north side, barely visible in camouflage fatigues and hat. He was holding the modified hunting rifle that he preferred for shorter ranges, scanning through a Schmidt & Bender scope.
“What have you got, Bruno?”
“Garbage.”
Coleman moved toward the east side of the clearing, stopping when he caught a glimpse of the gray wall surrounding Obrecht’s property. After carefully moving a few leafy branches, he got an unobstructed view of what McGraw was talking about. They were stuck in a trough between hills. From Coleman’s position on the ground, nothing more than the wall and the top of the mansion’s roof was visible. The gate was a complete write-off—too far south for even McGraw to see.
“Do you have a view into the courtyard?”
“Barely.”
“How many guards do you have eyes on?”
“I’m down to two. Intermittent.”
Coleman swore under his breath and pulled out a range finder. Just over 450 yards to the wall. To make matters worse—if that was even possible—they were no longer blocked from the wind. The gentle right-to-left breeze they’d had on top of the knoll was now being accelerated to eight knots as it funneled through a canyon to the east.
To say their new position was a tactical disaster would be the understatement of the century. He might as well have brought a cooler and some beach chairs for all the use they would be stuck in this hole.
“Can you hit either of them?” Coleman said.
“Eighty-twenty. It’s starting to gust.”
“Wick?”
He knew roughly where his top sniper was, but didn’t bother to look for him. Wicker had a custom-built tree stand with telescoping arms painted and textured to look like tree branches even from a few feet away. His camo was modified with fabric leaves and real bark that perfectly matched the tree species he was in. Even his rifle would have been custom painted for this particular contract.
“I’ve got a little more height than Bruno, but I’ve set up to prioritize my line of sight on our former position. I might be able to take one guard. Depends on timing, though. I’m maybe thirty percent.”
Coleman pulled back to the center of the clearing and began -emptying his pack. Best-case scenario, his guys would leave nine highly trained men and no less than two hundred yards of wide-open ground before they hit twelve feet of dead, smooth wall. He hated this plan even more now than when Rapp had first proposed it.
There was nothing he could have done to change it, though. He was comfortable arguing with Kennedy and would even mix it up with Hurley from time to time. Rapp was a different animal. Fighting with him was like taking a swing at a hornet’s nest. You weren’t going to win, and in the process of losing you were going to be in for a world of hurt.
He pulled a small monitor from his pack and turned it on, waiting for the screen to brighten sufficiently to see in the outdoor environment. The image was being beamed from the drone Marcus Dumond had doing lazy figure eights above.
The security detail was still on high alert inside the courtyard, but nothing in the rhythm of their activities suggested they knew about the storm gathering on their perimeter.
He activated his throat mike, keeping an eye on the image of the men he might soon be up against. “Are you still dead in the water, Stan?”
“Mmmmm hmmmmm.”
Coleman set the monitor down and pulled his rifle from its case. Outstanding. He had a cancer-ridden old man cooling his heels in a waiting room, two snipers stuck in the low ground, and Mitch Rapp crawling through a tunnel with the contract killer who murdered his family.
Just another glorious day in the service of the Central Intelligence Agency.
CHAPTER 22
STAN Hurley had chosen a hard, straight-backed chair in the corner over the more comfortable furniture placed throughout the parlor. Its position made a shot at him through the reportedly bulletproof windows impossible while allowing him to keep his back to the wall. Those were only side benefits, though.
In a life that had been lived with no compromises, now compromises were all he had. If he stayed on his feet and walked around the room, his recently replaced hip would start to ache. If he sat in one of the heavily cushioned chairs, he was in danger of falling asleep. And if he sat too long where he was, his knees would start to stiffen up.
Despite the fact that the main purpose of the CIA was gathering intelligence, no one there knew exactly how old he was. His birth on his parents’ kitchen table had left no written record, and the last witness to that event—his older brother—had died earlier that year. In fact, Hurley had just turned eighty.
The things he’d experienced over his lifetime astounded even him. Horse-drawn carts in the streets of Bowling Green, Kentucky. Collecting scrap metal with the other kids to support the war effort in Europe. The rise of the Soviet Union. His old friend Neil Armstrong planting an American flag on the moon.
And Mitch Rapp.
Hurley had done everything in his power—and a few things that were most definitely not—to wash the kid out. In the end, the only thing he succeeded in doing was burning out a bunch of the top -special ops guys that made up the rest of Rapp’s training class. Things that would have killed the average Army Ranger just made that little pissant stick his middle finger in the air.
On one hand, Rapp still had a way of getting under his skin like no one else. On the other, it was comforting to know that he was leaving Kennedy with someone who would always protect her. Always protect the country that had given them so much.
Hurley stood, subconsciously running through the list of physical ailments that could compromise the op if it got hot. After fifteen or so, he gave up and pulled a Camel from the pack in his jacket. He held a lighter to the innocent-looking white cylinder and inhaled a lungful of smoke. Over the years, he’d been shot, stabbed, garroted, thrown from a ship a hundred miles from shore, and poisoned. The last by a cute little Czech woman he was screwing. Kind of funny that the Grim Reaper had ditched his scythe and snuck up behind him with a tobacco leaf. Just another limp dick in a robe.
He started looking around the room again, getting the blood flowing as he walked. No update from Rapp yet. He was probably still in the tunnel. When he got out and found that the target hadn’t been located, he wasn’t going to be happy. Not that anyone would blame Hurley, but that didn’t matter. This wasn’t a business of excuses. You either got the job done or you didn’t.
So, what now?
The guard would be standing just outside the closed door, making it impossible for Hurley to simply wander out and play the befuddled old man if he came across anyone. He might be able to bash the man’s head in with one of the room’s antique knickknacks, but the chance of that compromising the op was nearly one hundred percent.
Hurley felt an all-too-familiar constriction in his lungs and put a handkerchief to his mouth, coughing uncontrollably into it. About halfway through his fit, the door opened and the guard who had led him there appeared. The good news was the desperate hacking would play into his cover as a helpless geriatric. The bad news was that it wasn’t an act. Hurley really was struggling to keep from collapsing and the handkerchief really was spattered with bloody specks
of what had once been his lungs.
“Mr. Obrecht will see you now,” the guard said, apparently unconcerned about the man choking in front of him.
Hurley wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and walked unsteadily toward the door. “Thank you.”
“Second floor,” the guard said, falling in a pace behind.
Hurley suppressed a smile as he headed for a broad set of steps supported by marble pillars. The timing would be perfect. When Rapp and the frog came out of that tunnel, he’d already have Obrecht wrapped up like a birthday present.
A skylight in the domed ceiling threw a shadow and Hurley kept his eye on the guard’s as they began to ascend. The man was three steps back with his assault rifle held against his chest. The image got increasingly dim as they ascended, but not so dim that Hurley didn’t see the rifle suddenly begin to rise. He spun, lunging for the man just as the plastic butt caught him in the side of the head. The blow dazed him, but his momentum was still sufficient to send them both toppling down the steps.
When they hit the landing, Hurley’s head was swimming, and it felt like someone had jammed a hot knife in his hip joint. The other man had come through the fall in much better condition. Protected from the steps by his body armor and youth, he was on his feet before Hurley could even get to his knees.
This time when the rifle butt came down, there was nothing he could do.
CHAPTER 23
THE emergency lights bathed everything in red as Rapp pulled himself through the tunnel using his elbows. After a reasonably spacious entrance, the shaft had shrunk down to a cramped three feet wide by two feet high.
Rapp had suffered from mild claustrophobia since he was a kid. Years of fighting in the open spaces of America and the Middle East had made it worse for good reason: The speed, endurance, and accuracy that gave him his edge tended to be neutralized in these environments.
The fact that Gould’s feet were close enough to his face that he could smell the rubber soles offered some comfort. If anyone discovered them and hosed down the tunnel from the mansion side, the Frenchman would act as a reluctant shield. Even more important, the shaft was too tight for Gould to turn on him.
