by Flynn Vince
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sitting alone in your basement all year can make producing a book seem like a solo effort. Nothing could be further from the truth. Thankfully, I’ve managed to fall in with a good crowd.
Emily Bestler and Sloan Harris were always there for Vince and they’ve been every bit as supportive of me. Lara Jones keeps me on track. Simon Lipskar and Celia Taylor Mobley keep me from getting tangled in the complex web I’ve created over the last twenty years. David Brown leaves no marketing stone unturned. Ryan Steck props me up with his enthusiasm and unparalleled knowledge of the Rappverse. My mother and wife are my first editorial stop, providing early criticism and ideas. Rod Gregg has become a recurring character—making sure I don’t make any fatal firearms errors.
Without all of you, I’d just be staring at a blank computer screen . . .
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In Transfer of Power, Vince wrote that he intentionally omitted details relating to the White House and Secret Service. I find myself in a similar position with Lethal Agent.
Because of the sensitivity of border security at the time of writing, I’ve kept the details of crossings vague. Further, I either omitted or obscured the details of anthrax production.
PRELUDE
NORTHERN IRAQ
THE cave was more than ten meters square, illuminated with a handful of battery-powered work lights. The glare and heat from them was centered on two rows of men kneeling on colorful cushions. Armed guards lurked near the jagged walls, barely visible in the shadows.
Mullah Sayid Halabi sat cross-legged, gazing down from a natural stone platform. Most of the men lined up in front of him were in their middle years—former junior officers from Saddam Hussein’s disbanded army. Their commanders had been either captured or killed over the years, but these simpler soldiers were in many ways more useful. Their superiors had left the details of war to them while they focused on the much more critical activity of currying favor with Hussein.
The prior leader of ISIS had recruited these men in an effort to turn his motivated but undisciplined forces into an army capable of holding and administering territory. After his death in a drone strike, Halabi had taken over the organization with a much more ambitious goal: building a military capacity that could stand against even the Americans. Unfortunately, it was proving to be an infuriating, slow, and expensive process.
His men, generally prone to bickering and loud displays of fealty, had fallen silent in order to contemplate the rhythm of approaching footsteps. Halabi did the same, turning his attention to an inky black tunnel in the wall facing him. A few moments later, Aali Nassar appeared.
His expensive clothing was torn and covered in the dust that made up this part of Iraq. His physical suffering was admirably absent from his expression but evident in both his posture and the broken section of collarbone pressing against the luxurious cotton of his shirt.
Only hours ago, he had been the highly respected and greatly feared director of Saudi intelligence. A man who had never failed to prove himself—first in the Saudi Special Forces and then during his meteoric rise through the ranks of his country’s intelligence apparatus. He had the ear of the king, a devoted family, and a lifestyle marked by privilege and power.
But now all that was gone. His plot to overthrow the Saudi royalty had been discovered and he’d been forced to flee the country. The great Aali Nassar was now alone, injured, and standing in a cave with nothing more than the clothes on his back and the contents of his pockets. It was the latter that he hoped to exchange for protection and a position in the ISIS hierarchy.
“Welcome, Aali,” Halabi said finally. “I trust your journey wasn’t too uncomfortable.”
“Not at all,” he said, revealing only a hint of the pain that speaking caused him.
“I understand that you have something for me?”
The thumb drive Nassar was carrying had been discovered when he’d been searched for tracking devices in Mecca. He’d been allowed to keep it and now retrieved it from his pocket. When he stepped forward to hand it to Halabi, the men at the edges of the cave stirred.
“Don’t give it to me.” The ISIS leader pointed at a man to Nassar’s right. “Give it to him.”
He did as he was told and the man slipped the drive into a laptop.
“It’s asking for a password.”
“Of course it is,” Halabi said. “But I suspect that Director Nassar will be reluctant to give us that password.”
Prior to his escape from Saudi Arabia, Nassar had downloaded an enormous amount of information on that country’s security operations, government officials, and clandestine financial dealings.
“The intelligence and bank account information on that drive are yours,” Nassar said.
Halabi smiled. “A meaningless response. Perhaps politics was your true calling.”
“Perhaps.”
“Can we break his encryption?” Halabi asked.
His very capable technological advisor shook his head. “Unlikely. Torturing him for it would have a higher probability of success.”
“I wonder,” Halabi said thoughtfully. “It seems likely that there’s a password that would put the information forever out of our reach. Isn’t that so, Aali?”
“It is.”
Halabi rubbed his palms together in front of his face. “The money that drive gives us access to will quickly slip through our fingers and the intelligence will just as quickly become dated. Is it the information it contains that’s valuable or is it the cunning and experience of the man who brought it here?”
The question was clearly rhetorical, but one Halabi’s people answered anyway. “Do those qualities make him valuable or do they make him dangerous? He’s betrayed his king and country. Why? For the cause? For Allah? Or is it for personal gain? Can he be trusted, Mullah Halabi? Is he here to assist you or is he here to replace you?”
“I had power,” Nassar responded. “I had wealth. I had the respect of the king and the Americans. But I jeopardized it all. I—”
“The king is old and weak,” the man interrupted. “You feared the collapse of the kingdom and were playing both sides. The Americans discovered your treachery and now you’ve had to run.”
Nassar fell silent for a moment before speaking again.
“They discovered my allegiance to Mullah Halabi, yes. Regrettable, because while I can be of great assistance to you from here, I would have been much more effective at the king’s side. The effort that went into gaining his confidence isn’t something that I’d expect a simple soldier to understand.”
The man stiffened at the insult, but Nassar continued. “I’ve worked closely with the Americans on their homeland security protocols and preventing terrorist attacks on their soil. It’s given me an intimate knowledge of their borders and immigration policy, their power grid and nuclear plants. Even their water supply. If we strike surgically, we can turn the tide of the war. We can make the Americans lash out against all Muslims and turn your thirty thousand soldiers into a billion.”
Halabi stared down at Nassar, who averted his eyes in an obviously insincere gesture of fealty.
Then his forehead exploded outward.
In the split second of stillness that followed, Halabi saw
a bearded face flicker into view at the tunnel entrance. It was the face of the devil that had been burned so indelibly onto his mind and soul. The face of Mitch Rapp.
And then everything was in motion. Members of Halabi’s guard charged toward him while others fired into the tunnel. Three of his men began dragging him toward a small opening at the back of the cavern as the roar of gunfire and acrid stench of gunpowder became overwhelming.
A blinding flash preceded the sensation of shrapnel tearing through his lower leg. The man behind him took the brunt of the blast, slamming into Halabi from behind and driving him to the ground. The lights were immediately extinguished and debris began cascading from the ceiling. The men with him were either dead or unconscious, and Halabi struggled to get out from beneath the weight of the one sprawled across his back.
As he did so, the extent of his injuries became clear. His right arm was useless and completely numb. His left leg felt as though it was on fire and a dagger-like pain in his side made it difficult to breathe. The warm, wet sensation of flowing blood seemed to cover nearly his entire body, but it was impossible to know if it was his or that of his men.
A few muffled shouts became audible but were quickly drowned out by a collapse somewhere not far from him. A rush of air washed over him, filling the cavern with a choking cloud of dust and pulverized rock. He buried his face in his blood-soaked tunic and fought to stay conscious.
It couldn’t end this way. God wouldn’t allow it. He wouldn’t allow his faithful disciple to die at the hands of Satan’s representative on earth. Not before His work was done.
A test. That had to be the explanation. It was a test of his strength. His worthiness. His devotion.
Bolstered by that realization, Halabi managed to drag himself from beneath his man. The darkness was now absolute, but he was able to find the back wall of the cave and feel along it as the last weak shouts around him fell silent. Finally, he located the narrow opening he was looking for and, by the grace of God, it was still passable.
Reports were that it was six hundred meters long and varied from three meters in diameter to barely wide enough for a full-grown man. He dragged himself through the broken rock, feeling his way forward. In places the passage seemed blocked, but after a few moments of blind exploration, he always managed to progress a few more meters.
Finally the walls narrowed to the point that it was impossible to continue. He tried to retreat but found himself trapped.
The world seemed to disappear, adding to his confusion and amplifying the pain that racked his body. For a time, there was little else. No sound that wasn’t produced by him. No light that his eyes could process. Only the pain, the taste of earth, and the swirl of his own thoughts.
The elation he’d felt when he’d concluded this was a test became lost in the realization that what he was experiencing felt more like a punishment. What had he done to deserve Allah’s wrath?
He slipped in and out of consciousness, though in the darkness it was difficult to differentiate the two. He saw America. The gleaming buildings. The mass of humanity pursuing pleasure and comfort as a replacement for God. He saw the glorious collapse of the World Trade Center and the horror and vulnerability that attack had instilled in the American people. An incredible victory wasted by Osama bin Laden, who had turned to blithering endlessly about Islam on hazy video.
He saw the rise of ISIS fueled by its grasp of social media and intimate understanding of what motivated young men throughout the world. And, finally, he saw its battlefield victories and ability to terrify the Americans in a way that even September 11 hadn’t.
He tried to pull himself forward again and again collapsed into the bed of shattered rock beneath him. The darkness and silence was deeper than anything he’d ever experienced. It blurred not only the lines between consciousness and lucidity but between life and death. Only the pain and sound of his own breathing assured him that he hadn’t crossed over.
He didn’t know how long he lay there but finally the darkness began to recede. He opened his eyes but didn’t see the earthen tunnel around him. Only the blinding white light of God. It was then that he understood. It was his own arrogance that had brought him to this place. He had allowed his own hate and thirst for victory to deflect him from the work God had charged him with. He had become seduced by the power he wielded over his followers and the fear he commanded from his enemies. By visions of a new caliphate with him at its head, locked in righteous battle with the forces of the West.
He felt the panic rising in him, growing to a level that was nearly unbearable. The life he’d lived was a lie and God had finally shown him that fact. He had served only himself. Only his own vanity and hate.
Halabi clawed at the walls around him, unwilling to die in this graceless state. He felt something in his shoulder tear, but ignored it and was finally rewarded with a cascade of rock that created a path forward.
He was free.
CHAPTER 1
SOUTHWEST OF THAMUD
YEMEN
MITCH Rapp started to move again, weaving through an expansive boulder field before dropping to his stomach at its edge. A quick scan of the terrain through his binoculars provided the same result it had every time before: reddish dirt covering an endless series of pronounced ridges. No water. No plant life. A burned-out sky starting to turn orange in the west. If it were ninety-five below zero instead of ninety-five above, he could have been on Mars.
Rapp shifted his gaze to the right, concentrating for a good fifteen seconds before spotting a flash of movement that was either Scott Coleman or one of his men. All were wearing camo made from cloth specifically selected and dyed for this op by Charlie Wicker’s girlfriend. She was a professional textile designer and a flat-out genius at matching colors and textures. If you gave her a few decent photos of your operating theater, she’d make you disappear.
A couple of contrails appeared above and he followed them with his eyes. Saudi jets on their way to bomb urban targets to the west. This sparsely populated part of Yemen had become the exclusive territory of ISIS and al Qaeda, but the Saudis largely ignored it. Viable targets were hard to engage from the air and the Kingdom didn’t have the stomach to get bloody on the ground. That job had once again landed in his lap.
Satisfied they weren’t being watched, Rapp started forward in a crouch. Coleman and his team would follow, watching his back at perfect intervals like they had in Iraq. And Afghanistan. And Syria. And just about every other shithole the planet had to offer.
The Yemeni civil war had broken out in 2015 between Houthi rebels and government forces. Predictably, other regional powers had been drawn in, most notably Iran backing the rebels and Saudi Arabia getting behind the government. The involvement of those countries had intensified the conflict, creating a humanitarian disaster impressive even by Middle Eastern standards.
In many ways, it was a forgotten war. The world’s dirty little secret. Even among U.S. government officials and military commanders, it would be hard to find anyone aware that two-thirds of Yemen’s population was surviving on foreign aid and another eight million were slowly starving. They also wouldn’t be able to tell you that hunger and the loss of basic services were causing disease to run rampant through the country. Cholera, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and even diphtheria were surging to levels unheard-of in the modern era.
And anyplace that could be described using words like “forgotten,” “rampant,” and “war” eventually became a magnet for terrorists. They were yet another disease that infected the weakened and wounded.
An unusually high ridge became visible to the northwest, and Rapp dropped to the ground again, studying it through his lenses. He could make out a gap just large enough for a human about three hundred yards away.
“Whatcha got?” Coleman said over his earpiece.
“The cave entrance. Right where they said it would be.”
“Are we moving?”
“No, it’s backlit. We’ll let the sun drop over th
e horizon.”
“Roger that. Everybody copy?”
Bruno McGraw, Joe Maslick, and Charlie Wicker all acknowledged. The four men made up about half the people in the world Rapp trusted. Probably a sad state of affairs, but one that had kept him alive for a lot longer than anyone would have predicted.
He fine-tuned the focus on his binoculars, refining his view of the dark hole in the cliff face. It was hard to believe that Sayid Halabi was still alive. If Rapp had been any closer with that grenade, it would have gotten jammed in the ISIS leader’s throat. But even if his aim had been way off, it shouldn’t have mattered. The blast had brought down a significant portion of the cavern he’d been hiding out in.
The collapse had been extensive enough that Rapp himself had been trapped in it. In fact, he’d have died slowly in the darkness if Joe Maslick wasn’t a human wrecking ball who had spent much of his youth digging ditches on a landscaping crew. Oxygen had been getting pretty scarce when Mas finally broke through and dragged him from the grave he’d made for himself.
Despite all that, the intel on Halabi seemed reasonably solid. A while back, someone at NSA had decrypted a scrambled Internet video showing the man standing in the background at an al Qaeda meeting. The initial take had been that it was archival footage dredged up to keep the troops motivated. Deeper analysis, though, suggested that the images may have been taken six months after the night Rapp thought he’d finally ground his boot into that ISIS cockroach.
The video had led to the capture of one of the people at that meeting, and his interrogation led Rapp to this burned-out plain. The story was that Halabi had been severely injured by that grenade and was hiding out here convalescing. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question was whether it was true. And if it was true, was he still here. Clearly, he was healthy enough to be going to meetings and starting the process of rebuilding ISIS after the beating it had taken in his absence.