by Flynn Vince
He pulled back the bolt and opened the door, watching the three Westerners leap to their feet as he entered.
“How long will it take to make weaponized anthrax in a quantity sufficient for multiple large-scale attacks?” he said.
They looked at each for a moment before the woman answered. “None of us have ever made anthrax. We have nothing to do with bioweapons research. Do you have an Internet connection? You can look it up and see that I’m telling the truth.”
The Frenchman kept glancing over at her, drawing strength from his unwillingness to look weaker than a woman.
“Dr. Bertrand?” Halabi prompted.
He drew back at the sound of his name. “It’s . . . It’s not as easy as you think. That’s why no one uses those kinds of weapons. It’s not just that you could infect your own troops, it’s that nature tends to take its own path. It’s impossible to control and impossible to predict. And anthrax has its own unique problems that make it hard to weaponize. It—”
“I can assure you that I’m not stupid,” Halabi said, cutting the man off. “We know that anthrax can be weaponized because it’s been done before. By the Russians on a large scale and in 2001 by an American scientist with a background similar to yours. Now tell me how long and what additional equipment you will need.”
None answered.
“Muhammad . . .” Halabi said.
Attia pulled a pistol from the holster on his hip and fired a single round into the German nurse’s chest.
Victoria Schaefer managed to catch him before he hit the floor and Halabi watched a scene play out that was identical to the one with her translator. She tore open Vogel’s shirt, looked at the wound over his heart, and realized that she was powerless.
This time, instead of running, she lunged with surprising force and speed. It wasn’t enough, though. Attia caught her and dragged her toward the door at the back of the room. She screamed obscenities and fought violently enough that Attia was struggling to keep hold of her as he slid an ancient key into the lock. She actually managed to inflict a superficial wound on his neck before they disappeared across the threshold.
Her shouts and the sound of her beating futilely against Attia continued and Halabi examined Bertrand’s reaction. The Frenchman’s eyes flicked back and forth from the body on the floor to the open door the woman had been forced through. He was a surprisingly simple and transparent man. He showed no more empathy for his comrades than he had for patients. Instead, he seemed entirely focused on calculating how this affected his own situation.
The sounds of struggling faded and finally went silent. The woman, just out of sight in the room, would now be secured to the table at its edge. She managed to shout a few more epithets, but then her words became screams. Within a minute, there seemed to be nothing but her terror, pain, and hopelessness bouncing off the stone walls.
“How can you stand there and do nothing to stop this?” Halabi asked Bertrand. “What was it you said earlier? Anthrax isn’t even dangerous. And, as you suspected, I’ve released videos with my plans. The Americans will know what’s coming and be vigilant.”
Bertrand didn’t respond. He seemed to be slipping into shock as the screams of the woman echoed around them.
“I need to generate fear, Doctor. That’s all. My goal is to convince the Americans that there’s a price to be paid for continuing to create instability and suffering in the Middle East. We don’t want to be murdered for our oil. We don’t want our democratically elected governments to be overthrown and violent dictators to be inserted. In short, we don’t want to live like you and we don’t want to be your slaves. We just want to be left alone to find our own path.”
It was a sentiment that he would undoubtedly be sympathetic to, because it had largely been gleaned from his own naïve political posts on Facebook. Still, he didn’t answer immediately, holding out until the woman’s screams took on a gurgling quality.
“I’ll do it.”
Halabi nodded and shouted to Attia in Arabic. “Finish her!”
A gunshot sounded and Halabi put a comforting hand on Bertrand’s shoulder. “I’m sure she appreciated your mercy.”
CHAPTER 12
AL HUDAYDAH
YEMEN
“THESE images are garbage, Irene!”
Scott Coleman had recon photos that covered a radius of twenty miles around the place where he’d split from Rapp, but they looked like they’d been taken through the bottom of a dirty Coke bottle.
“The wind’s kicking up and the satellite can’t penetrate the dust,” Kennedy explained.
He ran a hand over the hazy eight-by-tens arranged on Shamir Karman’s desk, leaving a streak of blood across them. The bandage on his forearm was so tight he could barely feel his fingers, but the wound just wouldn’t stop seeping. It was hard to complain, though. He was lucky his arm was still attached. The fight to get back to Al Hudaydah had been nastier than he’d counted on.
Rapp had been right about most of the ISIS forces focusing on him, but that still left three vehicles full of terrorist pricks to come after Coleman’s team. The climbing had been steeper and looser than it looked and they’d gotten pinned down in a cliff band about thirty yards up the slope.
With the crack troops concentrating on Rapp, the less disciplined fighters had unleashed as much ammo as they could in his team’s general direction, underestimating how good their cover was. After ten minutes of setup, his guys had started to return fire—single rounds aimed at carefully selected targets. About half the ISIS force went down in the first two minutes, but then the rest got wise. After that, the skirmish had turned into a stalemate that wasn’t broken until well after sunset. The injury to his arm, a set of bruised ribs, and a self-sutured gash over his kneecap were souvenirs of the two hours he’d spent silently climbing back down the dark slope.
The remaining ISIS forces had assumed Coleman would go up and try to escape over the top, leaving them completely unprepared when the four Americans walked into their camp with silenced pistols. Things had gotten a little hairy when the inexperienced force panicked and started shooting wildly in every direction, but eventually they all ended up dead.
By then, though, it was too late to do anything for Rapp. More ISIS troops had joined the hunt and there were headlights spread out in a search pattern that was probably five miles wide. Worse was the fact that a few of them noticed the shooting behind and reversed course to provide support for their comrades.
Piling into the ISIS pickups and turning tail was one of the hardest decisions Coleman had ever made. But with that many enemy fighters and no idea where Rapp was, there had been no other option.
“Screw the photos,” Coleman said, sweeping them off the desk. “They’re not going to tell us anything we don’t already know. Mitch is out there and there’s only so far he could have gotten in the last . . .” He paused and looked at his watch, cursing silently. “ . . . forty-three hours. All we need is air support from the Saudis and to bring in—”
“It’s not going to happen, Scott.”
“What do you mean it’s not going to happen?”
“America’s role in the Middle East in general—and Yemen in particular—has come under a lot of scrutiny since the presidential primaries started. Christine Barnett is on the attack and everyone else is in defense mode. Getting anyone to authorize an operation in Yemen and trying to get any meaningful cooperation from the Saudis at this point is . . .” Her voice faded but the message was clear.
“So after everything Mitch has done for the president, America—and even Saudi Arabia—this is how they repay him? By abandoning him in the middle of the Yemeni desert? Because the optics might not be great inside the Beltway?”
“I’m afraid optics are all that’s left inside the Beltway,” Kennedy said. “But I’m not completely powerless. Not yet. I have a chopper pilot on his way to you and I’ll find a way to borrow an aircraft. I’ve also contacted a number of private contractors who have worked with either you or
Mitch in the past. We’re bringing them in—”
“When?” Coleman said, cutting her off for perhaps the first time in his life.
“You should have one chopper and as many as ten men within thirty-six hours.”
He did the math in his head. “By then he’ll have been out there for more than three days with nothing but a half-full CamelBak, an M4, and a couple of spare mags.”
“Christine Barnett has everyone on—”
“I don’t give a shit about that crazy bitch!” he shouted but then lowered his voice after realizing he’d just yelled at the director of the CIA. “I’m sorry, Irene.”
“I’m as frustrated and angry as you are, Scott. And I’m doing everything I can.”
“I know. Keep me posted,” he said and then disconnected the call.
He lowered himself into the chair behind him and looked down at the useless photos scattered across the floor. That was it. Mitch Rapp had been abandoned. And not just by the American and Saudi politicians. By him. He should have told Rapp to shove his orders up his ass. He should be out there fighting with him. And if necessary dying with him. One last charge into a barrage of ISIS bullets would be a hundred times better than sitting in this room doing nothing.
His sat phone rang and he declined the call when he saw that it was Claudia. What could he tell her? That Mitch was somewhere in the desert with every ISIS fighter in Yemen either searching for him or on their way to search for him? That instead of helping, his team was sitting around with their thumbs up their asses?
“You should talk to her.”
Joe Maslick was sitting on a stool in the corner of the tiny room, feeling as helpless as he was. The others were checking their weapons or catching some shut-eye on the building’s bombed-out second floor, waiting for word that they were going back into action.
Coleman nodded and was about to reach for the sat phone when the door leading to the office started to swing inward. Instead of the phone he grabbed the SIG P226 next to it, while Maslick retrieved a similar weapon from his holster.
The man standing in the threshold had a bearded face almost completely obscured by the scarf wound around his head. Only two bloodshot eyes and the sun-damaged skin around them were visible. He was dressed in traditional Yemeni garb but it was so caked with dirt that it was impossible to even guess at the original color of the cloth.
He ignored the two men aiming guns at him, fixating on the bottle of water on the desk. Coleman watched as he pushed the scarf away from his mouth and drained the bottle in one long pull.
It took the former SEAL a few seconds to conjure the expected nonchalance. “What took you so long?”
Rapp tossed the empty container on the floor and used the back of his hand to wipe the mud from his lips. “Stopped for lunch. Can I assume we’re blown here?”
“Yeah. Four Americans in camo showing up at the restaurant hasn’t been great for Karman’s cover.”
He nodded. “Tell him to gather up his people and get us some vehicles. We’ll wait until dark and then make a run for the Saudi border.”
CHAPTER 13
WESTERN YEMEN
SAYID Halabi began to stand, but the pain in his damaged spine prompted him to abandon the idea. Instead he settled back behind the desk that dominated the room. A Panasonic Toughbook computer sitting in front of him was connected to a series of satellite dishes that beamed signals horizontally for kilometers before finally pointing skyward. Maps of the Middle East, Europe, and America hung on the walls, allowing him to visualize how the world would be affected by his plans.
Thousands of miles to the west, Irene Kennedy was sitting at a similar desk, with a similar computer, considering similar maps. All more grand and sophisticated, of course. But fundamentally the same. If he was going to defeat America, he would have to learn to think like the woman charged with protecting it. Strategize like her. Use the high-tech tools at her disposal with equal dexterity.
During his time convalescing from the injuries Mitch Rapp had inflicted on him, he had come to accept that ISIS would never be a military force to rival the West. With that acceptance, though, had come the realization that it wasn’t necessary. The era of traditional armies was over and had been for decades. For all its size and sophistication, even the American military was capable of little more than a lengthy string of elaborate failures.
The world was now defined by a complex web of interrelated cold wars. External battles between the Europeans, Americans, Russians, and Chinese raged just beneath the surface. But even more important were the internal battles—between the individual countries that made up the EU, between political parties, between races and economic classes.
The United States was as weak as it had been in human memory. Its people were unconcerned with anything but their own selfish needs and had turned their political system into just another source of cheap entertainment. Its defenses were still built around standing armies that had become little more than a way for the military-industrial complex to enrich itself. America’s ability to adapt and reinvent itself had been stripped away by politicians who had trained their constituents to view change with fear and anger.
God had provided him with the right weapon at the right moment in history. Now his primary mission was to use America’s internal tumult to keep Irene Kennedy and Mitch Rapp blinded, and to ensure that when the moment came, America would be too fractured to react. The world would be left rudderless.
So far, it had been child’s play. Christine Barnett had latched on to the anthrax videos immediately, using them to attack her political opponents and the CIA instead of concerning herself with defending her country. Even more interesting was her willingness to go beyond accusations of incompetence and to insinuate that the Alexander administration’s activities in the Middle East had brought about this attack.
Halabi had thought Barnett was going too far and might suffer backlash, but he’d been proven wrong. In an America trained to react only to partisanship, her message was finding an audience. It was human nature to hate the traitor more intensely than the enemy, and in America the two parties were increasingly using the language of treason when referring to each other. It had gone so far that an enterprising businessman was printing T-shirts that read “I’d Rather Be ISIS Than . . .” and then finished half with “Republican” and half with “Democrat.” To Halabi’s great amusement, he was having a hard time keeping them in stock.
He reached out and retrieved a worn notebook from his desk, flipping absently through it for a few moments. Gabriel Bertrand’s elegant scrawl was all in French but it would have been equally incomprehensible in English or even Arabic. The complex analysis of the Yemeni respiratory disease contained in the text was currently being translated and put into layman’s terms by a young Egyptian doctor.
The man’s report would be delivered later that week, but Halabi didn’t need it to know that the book contained the blueprint for overthrowing the world order that had persisted for centuries. That Gabriel Bertrand had unknowingly revealed the secret to inflicting suffering and death on a scale unimaginable in the modern era.
Muhammad Attia appeared in the doorway and Halabi returned the book to his desk. “What of Mitch Rapp, Muhammad?”
The man’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t speak.
The reaction was no surprise. Attia had always opposed his master’s focus on the CIA man but hesitated to give voice to that opposition. Finally, he spoke.
“Our last confirmed contact with him was almost twenty hours ago.”
Halabi leaned forward in his chair. “Does that mean you believe him to be dead?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t understand. He’s one man alone in difficult, unfamiliar terrain. On the other hand, your highly trained men have now been joined by what? Two hundred additional fighters and more than thirty vehicles?”
Attia nodded.
“Your silence isn’t an answer, Muhammad.”
Finally, a hint of resolve
became visible in his disciple’s expression. “No one has even seen him since he descended into the canyon. Or, better said, no one who’s survived. Twelve of our men are dead, including three of mine. He seems to be targeting our crack troops and leaving the others alone to the degree possible. He kills them, strips them of their food, water, and weapons, and then fades back into the desert.”
“He’ll become exhausted,” Halabi said, the volume of his voice slowly rising. “He’ll get sick or injured. He can’t last out there forever. Bring in more local men loyal to us. Overwhelm him. Trap him like the animal he is.”
“Trap him?” Attia said, the frustration audible in his voice. “We can’t even find him. All we can do is make guesses based on the pattern of bodies he leaves behind. It’s likely that he buries himself during the day to sleep and moves only at night. And he has an endless supply of food, water, and ammunition because it’s being provided by his victims.”
“The desert will—”
“The desert will do nothing!” Attia said, daring to interrupt him. “This isn’t a hardship for him. It’s his home. He’s spent his entire adult life fighting in places just like this one. He could live out there for weeks. Perhaps months. Killing our people when they present an opportunity or when he needs supplies. But he won’t have to, because his comrades won’t leave him out there forever. They’ll find men loyal to him and they’ll find aircraft. When that day comes, our men will die without ever having laid eyes on Mitch Rapp. What is it you tell me every day? That with a thousand good men, you could bring America to its knees overnight? But you can’t find a thousand good men. And now you’re going to leave the few you have managed to find to be picked off one by one by a man who America’s next president will likely put in prison.”
Halabi felt the familiar hate well up inside him but then it faded into an unfamiliar sense of confusion and uncertainty. Had he fallen into the same trap that had snared him so many times before? Rapp’s life had been his for the taking in that village. But instead of ordering the helicopter destroyed on its way in, he’d insisted on Rapp’s capture. Why? Did it further the pursuit of Allah’s will?