Protect and Defend

by Vince Flynn

  Secretary of State Wicka, fortunately, did not hold those opinions. Liberal in her politics, she was a woman who had traveled the world and understood both human nature and the complexities of individual cultures. A widow and the mother of five boys and a girl, she had been hammering the president on sexism since the day she had been confirmed. Not sexism in his administration or even the country. Wicka held the belief that the long-term key to winning the war on terror was to get the women involved. As long as the Muslim extremist culture was dominated by bigoted men stuck in the Middle Ages, there could be little hope of finding peace. Kennedy had joined ranks with her in pushing this as a key policy for the president.

  The vehicle came to an unexpected stop a mile from Foggy Bottom. She was about to ask her driver what was going on when she saw the intersection was blocked by another motorcade of sedans and SUVs. With Iran making noise and threatening reprisals, the Department of Homeland Security had recommended that personal protection details for all key administration figures be stepped up. Kennedy’s security chief had already made the adjustment even though she voiced her opinion that the decision was premature. DC traffic was some of the worst in the country, and all of these motorcades only made things worse.

  Just as the intersection cleared, Kennedy’s mobile Secure Telephone Unit began buzzing. She looked at the readout and saw it was her office. She pulled the black handset from its cradle and said, “Hello?”

  “I have Mitch on the line.” It was the voice of one of Kennedy’s three assistants.

  “Patch him through, please.”

  There was clicking noise and then Rapp came on. “Irene?”

  “Yes.”

  “I just finished the first leg of my journey.”

  “Are you back in the air?”

  “I wouldn’t be talking to you if I was still on the ground.”

  “How did it go?”

  “The guy is unbelievable. He actually tried to blame it on us at one point.”

  Kennedy sighed. Moments like this made her wonder if Ben Freidman was actually an ally. “What did he say?”

  “He tried to say it was our planes that were seen in the air.”

  “How did you respond?”

  “I told him there weren’t any planes in the air. Theirs or ours. That was when I saw the chink in that ugly mug of his. He started to get real evasive and nervous. Especially when I laid out for him exactly how the place had been destroyed.”

  “How did he react?”

  “Worried…he wanted to know who I had talked to.”

  “And?”

  “I told him I had a source inside his government.”

  Kennedy smiled and said, “You didn’t.”

  “Damn right. That prick. He’s got more spies in America than practically every other country combined, and what’d we give them last year? Five billion dollars in aid?”

  “Roughly.” The motorcade was now pulling up to the first checkpoint a block away from the State Department. The CIA security people had called ahead, so the crash gate was down and they were being waved through. “You do know he’s going to launch an investigation to find out who talked to you?”

  “Good. It might keep him out of my hair for a while. I told him to stay silent and tell his government to keep denying.”

  “You didn’t tell him what you were up to, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” The motorcade breezed through the checkpoint and pulled up in front of the main entrance. “Anything else?”

  “No. Our guy in Mosul has everything set up. I’ll call you as soon as I finish the meeting.”

  “Thanks.” Kennedy placed the phone its cradle and waited for the door to be opened. It seemed like overkill, but it was the policy of her protective detail. They wanted to sweep the area to make sure there were no threats before she left the cover of the Suburban. Five seconds later the door was opened. Kennedy left the vehicle and was flanked by men as she headed up the stairs and into the building. They were greeted by a State Department official who escorted them past the metal detectors and into a waiting elevator.

  Wicka was waiting for Kennedy in her expansive office. While the outside of the Harry S. Truman Building would not ever be chronicled in the annals of great American architecture, the secretary’s office was impressive. It looked as if it had been transported from an eighteenth-century French villa. The furniture, carpeting, gilded ceiling, and alabaster fireplace radiated wealth and prestige.

  The secretary of state looked over the top of a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles perched on the end of her nose. Her short frosted hair was cut in layers. She pushed her chair back and stood.

  “Thank you for coming, Irene.”

  “My pleasure, Sunny.”

  “Can I get you anything to drink?”

  “No thank you. I’m fine.”

  Wicka walked over to a small wet bar and grabbed two coffee mugs. She set them down and pulled a bottle of Hennessy brandy out of the cupboard. She poured some brandy into each mug and then carried them over to where Kennedy was standing.

  “You look like you could use some.” Wicka handed Kennedy one of the mugs.

  Kennedy smiled. “Nice choice of stemware.”

  “This place is filled with prudes and teetotalers. It’s not like the old days, I’ll tell you that.”

  Kennedy held up her mug. “To the old days.”

  Wicka raised her mug and clanged it against Kennedy’s. “Although, I suppose in the old days they would have never let us out of the secretarial pool.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, screw the old days.” Wicka pointed toward the fireplace and two waiting chairs. “I saw in the paper today Stu Garret drowned while vacationing in Central America.”

  “Costa Rica,” Kennedy offered.

  Wicka took the chair on the right and studied Kennedy for a moment. Finally, she offered, “The man was a real jerk.”

  Kennedy pursed her lips while she thought of an appropriate response. She got the sense Wicka might know more than she was letting on. “He had a knack for getting under people’s skin.”

  “He sure did.” Wicka took a drink and said, “I hear you’re leaving for Iraq in the morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I always am.”

  “I mean extra careful. I don’t trust the Iranians.”

  Kennedy brought the mug up to her lips but didn’t take a drink. “I’ve found Ashani to be a pretty reasonable person to deal with.”

  “I don’t know him, but he’s not the one I’m worried about. It’s that little Amatullah who scares the heck out of me.” Wicka took a drink of brandy. “Why is it that these wacky dictators are all short?”

  “Coincidence.” Kennedy took a sip. “Saddam was over six feet tall.”

  “What about Hitler? He couldn’t have been more than five ten.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  “Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, Chairman Mao.”

  “What about Stalin? I don’t think he was short.”

  “Well…whatever it is, I don’t trust Amatullah. Just be very careful while you’re over there. Especially after I put on my little performance in New York tomorrow. They are not going to like being embarrassed like that.”

  “No, they won’t, but that’s why I’m going over there to offer them the olive branch.”

  “Don’t forget that men like Amatullah don’t want peace. They need us as an enemy to stay in power.”

  “True, and that’s why I’m the one making the trip and not you. There’s nothing official about this. Not until they agree to keep a leash on Hezbollah.”

  “I’m not saying I don’t agree with the plan. I do. I’m saying be careful.”

  Kennedy smiled. “I will. So what can I help you with for tomorrow?”

  23

  MOSUL, IRAQ

  The sun was dropping beyond the horizon as the G-5 descended out of a patch of wispy clouds. The city
of Mosul spread out beneath them, the Tigris River slicing along the eastern edge of the metropolitan area of two million. Five main bridges connected the old city to its sprawling suburbs. The city’s roots were steeped in trade. For centuries it had been an extremely ethnically and religiously diverse place. In the late eighties Saddam Hussein put an end to that. He drove out the Jews, the Christians, and most tragically the Kurds.

  Saddam replaced them wholesale with Sunni families who had sworn allegiance to him or were from his hometown of Tikrit. The Kurds were forced out of the city and took refuge in the foothills along the Turkish border, where they continued to build a guerrilla force and live in defiance of Saddam. Since the fall of Saddam, the city had been in flux. The CIA had formed a very effective relationship with the Kurds. Whenever things got ugly in Mosul, the CIA would call their Kurdish friends who were garrisoned to the north. They would roll back into the city and slap down whichever faction was causing trouble. The Shia population this far north was nothing like it was in the south, but that didn’t stop Iran from sending in its Badr Brigades to stir up trouble, or al-Qaeda in Iraq from trying to foment violence between the Sunnis and the Kurds.

  Rapp looked past the port-side wing and counted the bridges. He couldn’t understand why the damn country just wasn’t split in three. It didn’t even exist in its current state until the aftermath of WWI. For five centuries the Turks, the Kurds, the Persians, and the Safavids had all fought over a piece of land made fertile by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Then the British and the French came along and decided to redraw the map of the Middle East and everything went to hell. Mosul, thanks to the Kurds, however, was showing real stability. So much so that the pilots felt safe enough to take a straight approach over the heart of the city. If it had been Basra or Baghdad they would have corkscrewed their way down onto the strip. Not an enjoyable way to land.

  The plane set down gently and proceeded to the CIA’s sector within the base, where the sixty-million-dollar Gulfstream 5 was placed inside a hardened hangar. One by one they filed off the plane and opened the cargo hold. Rapp grabbed his oversized backpack along with two black rectangular cases. He walked to the door of the hangar in time to see two sedans approaching. The first was a Ford Crown Victoria, and the second was a Chevy Caprice Classic. The vehicles were dusty and dented and approaching at a speed that made Rapp a little nervous.

  The driver of the first car began waving through the open window. Rapp could barely make out the face of the person on the other side of the tinted windscreen. It was Stan Stilwell, the CIA’s chief of base in Mosul. The car came to an abrupt halt and the door sprang open. In the tradition of T. E. Lawrence, Stilwell had gone native. He was dressed in a loose-fitting pair of black dress pants and a gray and black check-patterned dress shirt. His face was a dark shade of bronze, and his black mustache was so thick it looked as if he’d been growing it since puberty.

  “Brother Mitch,” Stilwell announced as he transferred his cigarette from his right to his left hand. “It’s good to see you.”

  Rapp took Stilwell’s hand and met him with a half hug. “How the hell have you been, buddy?” Rapp had known Stilwell for more than a decade. A few years his senior, Rapp had been a mentor of sorts for Stilwell on his first overseas assignment.

  “I’m great. Things are good here in Kurdistan.”

  “I bet. How many girlfriends?”

  “A few.” Stilwell smiled, revealing a thin gap between his top front teeth.

  “You know one of these days you’re going to end up with a very angry father on your hands, and he’s going to make you choose between castration and the altar.”

  “No one’s caught me yet.”

  Rapp thought about reminding him of the time he’d had to talk Kennedy out of reprimanding him for one of his unreported dalliances but didn’t want to bring it up in front of Ridley. “Famous last words.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I’m just saying sooner or later your luck is going to run out.”

  Stilwell took a drag from his cigarette. “You’re probably right.”

  “Is everything ready to go?”

  “Yep. He’s waiting for us back at my place. Give me those bags.” Stilwell looked over Rapp’s shoulder and saw Ridley. “Hey, boss. How you doing?”

  “Stiff,” Ridley said in a grumpy voice.

  “Good to see you too.” Stilwell picked up Rapp’s two cases and stuffed them in the sedan’s big trunk. “Boss,” he said to Ridley, “why don’t you ride with Mike in the second car? I don’t expect any problems, but there’s no sense in making it easy for them.”

  “Stan,” Rapp said as he pointed to Dumond, “meet Marcus.”

  “Hey, Marcus, let me take those bags from you.” Stilwell grabbed the first black case and almost dropped it. “Jesus, what in the hell do you have in here?”

  “Equipment.”

  “No shit.”

  Rapp walked to the rear of the car where everyone had congregated. Looking at Stilwell he asked, “Did Rob brief you on everything?”

  “Not all the details, but I can see where you’re going.”

  “And?”

  “I love it.”

  “What about Massoud?” Massoud Mahabad was MEK’s main guy in Mosul.

  “He thinks it’s great.”

  “Can we depend on him?”

  Stilwell tossed his cigarette to the ground and fished a new one from a crumpled pack. “Massoud is probably the most trustworthy person I’ve met since I’ve been here.”

  “Good. Do we need any extra hardware for the drive?” Rapp was referring to guns.

  “No. We won’t be stopping.”

  “Are you sure?” Rapp asked in a doubtful tone.

  “If it’ll make you feel better, go ahead.” Stilwell lifted up the right tail of his dress shirt to reveal a Glock pistol and two extra magazines. “There’s a twelve-gauge mounted on the ceiling and a P-Ninety under the dash.”

  “Good enough for me. Let’s roll.”

  Ridley and Dumond got in the second car and Rapp got in the first car with Stilwell. The first thing Rapp did when he got in the front seat was reach under the dash and yank the P-90 from its spring-loaded grips. The small bullpup submachine gun was extremely accurate and great for tight fights. Rapp slid the breach back to see if a round was chambered and then put the weapon back.

  As they rolled toward the main gate Rapp asked, “You been hit since you’ve been over here?”

  “A few times, back when we were driving the Suburbans around.” Stilwell shook his head. “It was really stupid of us. Those things just turned us into a big fat target.” He glanced over at Rapp. “I won’t get in one now.”

  “Smart move. This door seemed pretty heavy. You put some armor plating in it?”

  “Yep. In fact Massoud did it for me. He’s making a killing on his auto parts business in addition to armoring old cars like this.”

  They were waved through the main gate and then zigzagged their way through the big concrete Jersey barriers before they made it to the main road. Stilwell turned north and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. He grabbed a clear plastic mouth guard from the dashboard and held it up for Rapp to see. He put it in his mouth and then punched the accelerator. The big Detroit V8 engine roared to life.

  “This is the worst part of the trip, right here. It’s like the Indy five hundred, but with bombs.”

  Rapp hurried to put on his seat belt. “What’s with the mouth guard?”

  “These people are some of the shittiest drivers in the world. One of our guys got in a collision a few months ago. He got hit so hard he bit off his tongue.”

  Rapp looked over at Stilwell to see if the man was pulling his leg. He noticed him white-knuckling the steering wheel and decided it was no act. Rapp gripped the door handle tightly and swore to himself.

  24

  TEHRAN, IRAN

  Imad Mukhtar was in a foul mood. He looked around the rectangular table with contempt. As
a man of action nothing bothered him more than having to listen to soft men spout platitudes. It was the same thing with these pretenders every time. We will push Israel into the sea. We will vaporize their entire country. We will wipe them from the map. We will make the Americans beg for forgiveness. We will, we will, it went on and on and they never lifted a finger to do one hundredth of what it was that they talked so boisterously about.

  Mukhtar wanted desperately to move beyond Israel. The stubborn little country bored him. They were showing signs of weakness. The old guard was dying off. The ones who remembered all the broken promises. They were slowly being replaced by younger Jews who were sick of the attacks. Sick of the murders and carnage. So sick, they were willing to grasp at the illusion of peace. Mukhtar had no respect for them. He may have hated their parents and grandparents, but he respected and feared the stubborn old bastards. This young crop in both Beirut and Tel Aviv, with their iPods and cell phones, were losing their identities.