Lethal Agent

by Flynn Vince

  “Nice work. Give Bob Woodman my compliments,” Rapp said, hovering his thumb over the disconnect button.

  “It’s just blind luck that we intercepted it,” Alexander rushed to say. “NASA stumbled on it. And it’s even luckier that one of the random samples they took was from the package containing anthrax.”

  He could feel Claudia’s eyes drilling into him. “That’s very interesting, sir, but with all due respect, what’s it to me?”

  “We’re not going public,” the president said, clearly committed to dragging this out for some reason. “The hope is that we can trace the drugs back to the traffickers Halabi’s using.”

  “Good luck,” Rapp said, but again Alexander spoke before he could disconnect the call.

  “You understand my position, don’t you, Mitch? A few days ago, Halabi’s anthrax was nothing but a bunch of propaganda videos on the Internet. On the other hand, I see Christine Barnett as a clear and present danger to the country. Now the situation’s changed. We’ve been attacked with a biological weapon and it’s not going to be the last. All other considerations—including doing something that could inadvertently help Barnett get into the White House—are secondary. And that’s the kind of playing field you work best on.”

  “Is it? Next year you’ll be playing golf and signing a multimillion-dollar book deal. Irene and I will be running from five different Senate investigations.”

  “Maybe. But you’re not going to turn your back on your country. And neither am I.”

  Before he could answer, Claudia did it for him. Her shrill scream nearly shattered his eardrums in the tiny bunker.

  “He doesn’t want your fucking job!”

  Both he and the president fell into stunned silence as she climbed the ladder and disappeared through the hatch.

  Alexander was the first to speak. “Is that true?”

  Rapp sat back down. In many ways everything Claudia had said to him that day was right. America was tearing itself apart with hate and rage that had no basis in reality. Christine Barnett would be the next president of the United States and come out gunning for Rapp, Kennedy, and anyone else she couldn’t control. What Claudia couldn’t see, though, was that America’s core was unchanged. The United States was a country of extremes. It had moods. Phases. Eras. But in the end, it always eventually got its shit together and remembered what it was.

  “Mitch? Are you still there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. But I’ve got a question.”

  “Ask it.”

  “How much is it worth to you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We had a conversation just like this one a while back. You made it clear that it was my neck on the chopping block, not yours. I’m not in the mood to play that game again.”

  “I assume you have demands?”

  “You assume right. I want a pardon.”

  “You haven’t done anything yet.”

  “Then just start it with ‘I pardon Mitch Rapp’ and end it with your signature. The middle can be blank. And you should probably leave a fair amount of space.”

  When Alexander spoke again, his voice had turned a bit cold. “Anything else?”

  “A letter saying that you were kept fully informed of my actions and approved of all of them.”

  “Are you actually going to?”

  “What?”

  “Keep me informed.”

  “No.”

  “Then how can I sign documents like that?”

  “That, sir, is not my problem.”

  CHAPTER 23

  SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

  USA

  THE road’s dirt surface was rutted to the point that Rapp could barely get the SUV to forty miles per hour. In the east, the rising sun was illuminating the mountains and creating a blinding glare on his windshield. The desert in this part of California didn’t look much different than Yemen beyond the addition of a few scattered cactus and Joshua trees.

  After another ten minutes and two dry river crossings, a building started to separate itself from the heat shimmer to the north. No photos had been available, but it was pretty much as Claudia described—a dilapidated wood and stone structure that had served various purposes over its sixty-year history: storage facility for the forest service, barracks for construction crews, and a temporary holding facility for captured illegal immigrants. Now some of the windows were missing glass, part of the roof was bowing, and the chain-link fence surrounding it was streaked with rust.

  The two Mexican traffickers caught at the San Ysidro mall were being held there, but they couldn’t be kept incommunicado for much longer. The cartels had eyes and ears everywhere and this would already register as unusual to them. A few more days would blow past unusual and move into the territory of suspicious.

  There was a partially collapsed wall about twenty yards from the fence and he pulled into the shade it offered. Claudia hadn’t called yet, so he grabbed a greasy paper bag from the passenger seat and got out, jumping up onto the vehicle’s hood and lying back against the windshield.

  The Coke he extracted from the bag was a little warm, but the burrito wasn’t bad. He watched the sun climb into a cloudless sky as he chewed, finally turning his attention to the building when a man in his early thirties appeared and approached the fence. They looked at each other for a moment and then Rapp went back to his breakfast.

  According to the intel he’d been provided, the man’s name was Holden Flores. He was a relatively new recruit to the DEA, well liked and in possession of a spotless record. It had been he who’d captured the two men being held in that building and for his first time at bat, it had been a solid performance.

  A tiny dot became visible in the sky to the south and Rapp shaded his eyes to watch it approach. The radio-controlled plane set a course straight for him, finally circling at an altitude low enough to show off its six-foot wingspan, cerulean paint scheme, and video equipment. Apparently the cartels had started using these things to keep their eye on American law enforcement.

  By the time he finished his burrito, another man had appeared at the fence. Thomas Braman was in charge of this operation and his reputation was more mixed than that of the young man he was now barking at. Not completely useless, but one of those arrogant government assholes who reveled in throwing around whatever scrap of weight they had. This was just the kind of situation that would drive a man like Braman crazy. He hadn’t been told about the anthrax, he had no idea why he’d just spent the better part of a week living in an abandoned maintenance building, and he was completely in the dark as to the identity of the man lying on the SUV outside his gate.

  Apparently he’d already called headquarters demanding information nine times and was currently dialing for an even ten. Rapp watched him jab Flores in the chest while he waited for the line to connect. A moment later he was pacing across the dusty enclosure, pointing in Rapp’s direction as he spoke urgently into the phone.

  Rapp went back to watching the drone, following it lazily for a couple of minutes before his own phone rang. The number that came up was a string of zeros ending in the number four, indicating an encrypted call from Claudia.

  “Yeah.”

  “I have them.”

  “And?”

  “One blank pardon and one letter saying that the president is aware of and has approved all of your actions. Both with original signatures.”

  “Any loopholes?”

  “They were too complicated for my English but Scott read them . . .” She paused a moment to recall his exact words. “He said you could ‘drive-by a bunch of nuns and walk.’ I’m not sure what that means exactly, but I gather it’s what you wanted.”

  Rapp nodded. “And he’s got them now?”

  “Yes.”

  Coleman was going to put Rapp’s presidential get-out-of-jail-free cards in an airtight lockbox that would then be buried somewhere along the remote trail system they ran on. Alexander was a decent enough man for a politician, but it didn’t stretch the i
magination to think he might get cold feet and want those documents back.

  “And you’re set on your end?” Rapp said.

  “Yes,” she said reluctantly.

  “Then let’s do it.”

  He hung up and slid off the hood, striding toward the gate. Flores just watched and Braman disconnected his call, moving to within a couple of feet of the chain link.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Mitch.”

  “You got ID?”

  “No.”

  This was just a bullshit dance and everyone knew it. Braman had been told someone of Rapp’s description was coming and that once he arrived, it was his operation. But the DEA man wasn’t going to cede authority without at least a show of defiance.

  Rapp pointed to the chain around the gate and Flores unlocked it, letting him through.

  “Anything I should know?” Rapp said as he walked toward the building with Braman hurrying to catch up.

  “They’re typical cartel soldiers. We’re in the process of interrogating them, but they’re not talking. They know their rights. And they know that if we keep them here much longer without charging them, their lawyers are going to eat us for lunch.”

  They entered the building and Rapp looked around the room he found himself in. Debris had been pushed to one side and the floor had been swept to the degree possible. To the right was a smaller room stacked with rusted tools and, incongruously, millions of dollars’ worth of cocaine.

  “Are they down there?” Rapp said, pointing to a narrow hallway.

  “Yeah. But I don’t know what you’re going to do with that information. I told you, we’ve been interrogating them nonstop since we got here, and tomorrow we have orders to get them and their product into the system. I don’t know where the hell you came from, and frankly I don’t care. But I guarantee you’ve never dealt with psychos like these. They’re the kind of people who throw bags of human heads into nightclubs. And they know exactly what’s going to happen to them if they say one word to us. So you’re wasting your time. And worse, you’re wasting mine.”

  Rapp nodded and started down the hallway, pushing through a metal door at the back. The room on the other side was probably twenty feet square, furnished with a single chair and illuminated by sun filtering through holes in the roof.

  The two men handcuffed to an overhead pipe were pretty much what he’d expected. Muscular, late twenties or early thirties, with tattoos visible through sweat-soaked shirts. Their shoes were missing and they had a few minor scrapes, probably from their capture and not their interrogation.

  The younger of the two had hard eyes, but the older one had crazy eyes. He lunged pointlessly in Rapp’s direction, before being stopped by his handcuffs. The motion was violent enough to open a cut on his right wrist and the blood began sliding down his wet forearm.

  “Fresh meat!” he shouted in heavily accented English. “Another DEA pussy? You got a woman at home? Would she like a real man? How about a daughter? You know I like them young. I show them a real good time before I slit their throats. We know who you are, little boy. We’re watching. We’re always watching.”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Braman shouted, trying to take control of the situation.

  “Your family’s first,” the man said, fixing on him. “You think we don’t know where they live?”

  The DEA man couldn’t hide that he was a little unnerved by the man’s words. And, in truth, he had every right to be. The cartel’s use of drones, hackers, and highly paid informants made it pretty credible that they really did know where his family lived. To date they hadn’t acted much on that kind of information on the U.S. side of the border, but it was just a matter of time.

  As the drug trafficker’s diatribe slipped into unintelligible Spanish, Rapp turned toward his compatriot. The younger man’s resigned expression suggested that he figured his future was pretty well laid out: Keep his mouth shut. Go to jail for a few years under the protection of cartel-sponsored gangs. Lie around, lift some weights, eat three squares a day, and finally get out and go back to work.

  When he eventually got around to meeting Rapp’s eye, though, he seemed to recognize that his situation had changed. He wasn’t sure how yet, but he looked worried. Maybe this wouldn’t be as long a day as Rapp had expected.

  “Let me go,” the crazy one said, switching back to English and refocusing on Rapp. “You could both just say I escaped. Then my friends won’t have to visit your families.”

  Rapp thought about the offer for a moment and then retreated back through the door. Flores jumped to his feet when he entered the outer room, but Rapp went straight for the storage area. He had to climb over the coke and a few shovels, but he managed to retrieve a large bolt cutter that he’d noticed earlier.

  When he returned to the interrogation room, Braman looked at him like he was nuts. “What kind of idiots is Washington sending me? If you’re too scared of this guy to be here, then go back home to the suburbs.”

  The cartel man’s face broke into a smug smile when Rapp lifted the bolt cutters toward his handcuffs.

  “Stop!” Braman said, reaching for his sidearm.

  Rapp opened the cutters, but at the last second diverted them to the man’s wrist. They were likely too old and dull to cut through the steel of the cuffs, but they didn’t have any trouble taking off a hand.

  The man screamed and dropped to his knees as Braman drew his pistol. The problem was that the DEA man wasn’t sure whom to point it at, and his hesitation gave Rapp time to swing the bloody bolt cutters into the weapon. It flew across the room as Rapp slammed his foot into Braman’s chest, sending him toppling back through the door.

  The DEA man just lay there on the floor, staring wide-eyed while Rapp slammed the door shut. As anticipated, there was no way to lock it from the inside, so he slid a rubber doorstop from his pocket and shoved it under the gap in the bottom.

  When Rapp finally turned back around, the small room looked like a slaughterhouse. Blood had spattered the walls and was pooling beneath the man staring at his severed hand.

  Then he was in motion. Rapp dodged right when he lunged, letting him pass by and collide with one of the room’s concrete walls. The second attack came almost immediately and was accompanied by a moaning scream that didn’t sound entirely human. This time Rapp went left with roughly the same result.

  Someone started banging on the steel door from the outside but the specially designed doorstop didn’t budge. The cartel man’s attacks continued for another minute or so, becoming slower and clumsier as the blood loss took its toll.

  Finally, he couldn’t rise. He tried to crawl in Rapp’s direction but only made it a few feet before collapsing facedown on the floor. The pounding on the door stopped around the same time, undoubtedly because Braman was on the phone, desperately trying to connect with the DEA director’s office.

  The sudden silence was surprisingly pleasant, and Rapp wiped some of the blood off the only chair in the room before sitting.

  The surviving cartel man looked a little shell-shocked.

  “How’s your English?” Rapp said.

  The man’s eyes locked on his colleague and the blood flowing from the stump where his hand had been a few minutes before. “It’s good.”

  “All right then. Let’s talk about how the rest of the afternoon’s going to go. You’re going to die. There’s nothing that’s going to change that. If you tell me everything I want to know, it’ll be quick. If you don’t, I’m going to use those bolt cutters to remove your balls. And if you don’t tell me after that, things are going to get serious. Do you understand?”

  “Don’t tell him anything!” the man on the floor gurgled.

  Rapp retrieved his Glock from a holster hidden beneath his shirt and shot him in the temple.

  “Do you understand?” he repeated, laying the weapon in his lap.

  The man managed to nod.

  “Good. What’s your name?”

  “Miguel Arenas.”

/>   “There was a specific package in that shipment of coke, Miguel. It was different than the others. What do you know about it?”

  When Arenas responded, his voice sounded a bit distant. Exactly what Rapp had been going for. People facing certain death tended not to concern themselves with their professional obligations or the problems of their multimillionaire employers.

  “There was one packet with markings that could be seen with black light. We were told to separate it out and deliver it to a different contact.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It was undoubtedly true. Cartels ran a lot like the CIA—need to know was one of their main mantras.

  “You have a description though, right? You had to be able to identify him to meet him.”

  “Six feet. Dark hair and skin. Beard. He doesn’t speak Spanish.” The man nodded toward his dead friend. “That’s why Paco and I were chosen for this job. We speak good English.”

  “Where?”

  “In the desert. The coordinates are on our phones.”

  The NSA had the phones, but hadn’t been able to crack them yet.

  “What’s the password on your phone?”

  “Calvillo386. All capital letters.”

  “When are you supposed to meet?”

  “Four days ago.”

  Rapp swore under his breath. Not that he was surprised, but he’d been hoping to get lucky. The goal had been to deliver a package of harmless simulated anthrax to the contact and then follow him as he distributed it to his network. And if it hadn’t been for all the grab-ass going on in Washington, he might have had time to pull it off. Now, though, he was screwed.

  “What cartel do you work for?”

  “Lacandon.”

  “Any other orders?”

  “No. Just make the delivery and cross back into Mexico.”

  Rapp picked up his pistol. “Then I only have one more question. Head or chest?”

  The man sagged against the handcuffs securing him to the pipe. “Head.”

  Rapp aimed and squeezed off a single round. Predictably, someone started pounding on the door again, but it lasted only a few seconds.