Lethal Agent

by Flynn Vince

  “Probably a little bit of both,” Rapp said honestly.

  CHAPTER 30

  ABOVE CENTRAL MEXICO

  NORMALLY Rapp slept like a baby on planes. Today, though, he was in an economy class seat wedged between a woman who weighed north of three hundred pounds and a man who let out brief, choking snores every twenty seconds or so. If he’d been on a C-130 over Afghanistan, he’d be spread out on a pile of cargo netting, dead to the world.

  It wasn’t just the seat, though. That imaginary C-130 would land in a country where he’d spent much of his adult life. In the Middle East, he knew the players, had access to highly trained backup, and spoke the language. He understood the culture and had a deep understanding of his enemy’s capabilities and motivations.

  When he touched down this time, he’d have none of those advantages. His Spanish was barely good enough to order a Coke. And worse, this wasn’t one of the simple search-and-destroy missions he’d become so good at over the years. Killing Carlos Esparza wasn’t the objective. In fact, the opposite was true. He needed to ingratiate himself with the man. To use him to learn about the ISIS network and follow it back to Sayid Halabi.

  Unfortunately, endearing himself to people had never been Rapp’s forte. Kind of the opposite, actually.

  Not that any of this was likely to matter. Esparza was probably just flying Rapp to Mexico so he could put a bullet in his head personally. The timing was kind of a shame. He finally had the blank presidential pardon he’d always dreamed of, and instead of taking it out for a spin, he was going to end up buried in the jungle.

  And while that was all bad, it wasn’t enough to keep him awake on a plane. No, that went deeper, to a question that was easy to ask but hard to answer.

  What the hell was he doing there?

  He’d given Claudia’s diatribe more thought than she’d probably give him credit for and come to the conclusion that she was largely right. Christine Barnett was going to be the next president of the United States and she’d use that position to destroy him and anyone else who refused to kneel.

  Best-case scenario, Rapp would survive this mission and be forced out of government service by her. Much more likely, though, was that Barnett would dedicate a significant amount of government resources to seeing him and Kennedy enjoying adjoining cells in a maximum security prison.

  And it wouldn’t exactly be hard. Rapp had just killed—technically murdered—two drug smugglers, and forced his brother to create a web of illegal transactions that spanned the globe. Even if Steven sat down in front of a Senate panel and demonstrated that it was all smoke and mirrors, it wouldn’t be enough. Rapp would end up being used as a weapon in Christine Barnett’s war against the intelligence and law enforcement communities that she saw as a check on her power.

  The plane finally touched down, and Rapp remained in his seat while the rest of the passengers rummaged around in the overhead bins. He’d leave the plane without the carry-on he’d brought. It was just a prop to make him look less suspicious to the people at the airline desk. At this point, his only meaningful possessions in the world were a fake passport, a GPS watch, a phone, and a wallet containing five hundred U.S. dollars and a couple of high-limit credit cards.

  When Rapp stepped into the terminal of Angel Albino Corzo International Airport, he immediately noticed the man flicking his gaze nervously from his phone to the crowd. He likely had nothing but a hazy drone photo to work with, so Rapp decided to help him out. He adjusted his trajectory toward the casually dressed Mexican and pointed to the exit.

  “That’s me. Let’s go.”

  The man led Rapp out of the building and they crossed to the parking area under clear skies and temperatures in the mid-nineties. Rapp’s thin linen shirt was already starting to soak through by the time they reached a large black SUV parked at the far end of the lot.

  Tinted windows made it impossible to see inside, but when Rapp climbed in the back, he found pretty much what he’d anticipated. Two men who looked like former Mexican soldiers frisked him and shoved him to the floor, pulling a cloth bag over his head and closing a set of handcuffs around his wrists. He resisted his natural urge to snap their necks. Driving around in an SUV full of corpses asking random people if they knew where Carlos Esparza lived wasn’t going to get him very far.

  It was impossible to measure the passing time, partially because his watch was secured behind him and partially because the warmth and vibration of the vehicle’s floorboard finally put him to sleep. For some reason, lying there with two cartel killers’ feet on his back was a lot more relaxing than the time he’d spent getting sucked into his own mind on the flight. There were no longer options to consider. No secondary concerns. No political agendas. His only job now was to survive long enough to find Sayid Halabi and kill him.

  The trip started out on smooth pavement, eventually degenerating into rough asphalt and then a dirt track that jerked him fully awake. In the last half hour or so, they crossed two streams deep enough for water to seep under the door and a few ruts that seemed even deeper.

  After what Rapp guessed was somewhere between three and four hours, they finally came to a stop. He was immediately dragged from the vehicle and shoved to his knees on the damp ground. Voices speaking Spanish swirled around him for a few minutes before the bag was pulled off.

  He squinted into the filtered sunlight and counted eight guards within his field of view. All were wearing camo, all were armed with AKs, and all had the look of former Mexican cops or army. Nothing special, but head and shoulders above the men he’d killed in California.

  Much more interesting was the house intermittently hidden by the jungle in front of him. From the exterior, it had the look of a primitive village, with clapboard sides, scavenged materials, and a roof of corrugated tin and palm fronds. From the air, it would be completely indistinguishable from the other tiny villages in the area, but from where Rapp was kneeling, it was quite the architectural marvel. Massive windows revealed a luxurious modern interior of marble and glass. A swimming pool was hidden under a roof held up by pillars designed to look like trees. Behind and to the north, some kind of crop—food, not drugs—had been planted in a way that suggested subsistence farming.

  A man in slacks and an open-collared shirt appeared from the house and approached to within ten feet of Rapp. He was probably in his early thirties, with vaguely stylish glasses and an expensive haircut. Certainly not Esparza. More likely some kind of business advisor. Rapp ignored him, craning his neck to get a better feel for his operating environment. It wasn’t too complicated. Jungle. Men with guns. Big house.

  Another five minutes or so passed in silence before a second man appeared. He was probably in his mid-forties, with medium-length hair that was a little wild, a gold and diamond watch that looked like it weighed as much as a brick, and clothes that seemed to have been chosen based on the number of digits on the price tag. It was one of the strange things about these cartel bosses. They spent half their time obsessing over accumulating obscene amounts of money and the other half trying to figure out what to do with it.

  “We had a bet whether you’d come,” Esparza said in solid English. According to Claudia he’d spent a fair amount of his youth in Arizona.

  “Who won?”

  The man just smiled and pulled a gold .44 Magnum Desert Eagle from his waistband. He aimed it at Rapp, who began instinctively running through the sequence of moves necessary to survive: Drop the cuffs that he’d picked in the first few minutes of the drive there. Roll forward, letting the round go harmlessly over his head. Get hold of the man, disarm him, pull him in close enough that no one would dare take a shot . . .

  That was a good way to kill Esparza and escape into the jungle, but Rapp had to remind himself again that that wasn’t why he was here. He was here to make friends and figure out how to get close to Sayid Halabi.

  “Seems like we’ve both gone through a lot of trouble for you to just shoot me,” Rapp said.

  “Oh, I’m
not going to shoot you. I’m going to torture you. For months. Until there isn’t anything left of you that can even feel pain. Until you don’t even know you’re human anymore. Then I’m going to feed you to my dogs.”

  “I feel like that would be a mistake,” Rapp said, slipping the cuffs off and getting to his feet.

  The familiar sound of weapons being slammed to shoulders momentarily drowned out the hum of jungle insects. Esparza thrust his weapon out in front of him but wouldn’t allow himself to take a step back in front of the men. His assistant, who was apparently less concerned with machismo, retreated a few feet.

  “You’re pulling in what?” Rapp said, dusting off his pants. “Seventy-five million a year on a gross of a hundred and ten?”

  Claudia had given him the number, and based on Esparza’s expression she’d gotten pretty close. “You’re heavily extended in pot, but legalization in the U.S. and Canada is starting to bite. So, you’re looking to replace that business with Middle Eastern heroin. You want to take advantage of the crackdown on oxycodone and replace the pharmaceutical industry as the supplier of choice. The bottom line is that you want to move up and you figure this is the play that can get you there.”

  Rapp fell silent and was surprised when the next man to speak wasn’t Esparza but the preppy sidekick. His accent was more highbrow.

  “And what do you think of that plan?”

  “I think you’ve got a good shot,” Rapp responded. “But it’s going to be complicated. Not only because the DEA knows the cartels are going to take this opening, but because working with the Arabs can be . . .” His voice faded for a moment. “Let’s say challenging.”

  “I have hundreds of people on my payroll,” Esparza said. “Police, intelligence operatives, judges, military officers. And I have enforcers. You’re not the only man in this business who’s good with a gun.”

  Rapp looked around him at Esparza’s guards. “Are you sure? From where I’m standing, your talent pool looks a little shallow.”

  Esparza aimed directly between Rapp’s eyes, but again his assistant cut in again.

  “I assume you think you have something to offer us?”

  “I can provide extensive knowledge of the operations of the U.S. government. CIA, NSA, FBI, and DEA. You name it. Even the White House.”

  “I have contacts in these places, too,” Esparza said, not wanting to be upstaged.

  “I also have a lifetime of experience dealing with the Middle East and speak native-level Arabic and fluent Dari. Those are pretty dangerous waters, and I know how to navigate them. You’re not just having to get around the Agency and the U.S. military. They’re the least of your problems. You’ve got a hundred different terrorist groups, tribes, and other factions—all of whom are involved in pissing contests that go back a thousand years. And if you manage to cut through all that, then it’s going to be time to deal with the Pakistanis and the Russians.”

  “And you expect me to believe that a crooked cop can, as you say, navigate those waters?”

  “Better than anyone on the planet.”

  “Better than anyone on the planet?” Esparza mocked. “You’re confident for a dead man.”

  “What’s your name?” the assistant asked.

  “Mitch Rapp.”

  It clearly didn’t mean anything to the man, but Esparza’s face went blank for a moment before he burst out laughing.

  “This is your story,” he barely managed to choke out. “That Mitch Rapp stole drugs from DEA and then came here to ask me for a job? For a moment, I thought you had balls. But now I see that you’re just crazy.”

  He summoned one of his guards, but then held out a hand when Rapp spoke again. Apparently he was finding the whole thing pretty entertaining.

  “You say you have highly placed contacts. Use them. My story isn’t going to be hard to confirm. Unless I miss my guess, this is blowing up all over the Beltway right now. And if you find out I’m lying, it’s just as easy to start cutting me up tomorrow as it is today.”

  CHAPTER 31

  SOUTHERN MEXICO

  AFTER almost two days, Rapp had his accommodations feeling pretty homey. The rusty steel cage itself measured about six feet long by three feet wide, by four feet high. It was located back far enough into the jungle that he could see the dim glow of Esparza’s complex in the evening but nothing more than foliage during the day.

  He’d managed to pull up the tall grass that grew around the cage and use it to create a fairly comfortable surface to stretch out on. A stick secured to one of the bars above him created a convenient stream of drinking water when it rained, which seemed to be about two hours every night. Bugs were plentiful, but a little too juicy and a touch bitter. Better than the lizard he’d caught last night, though. That thing had been dead hard to choke down. The bottom line was that the Lacandon jungle didn’t seem to have anything with the pleasant texture and slight nuttiness of an Iraqi scorpion.

  He’d been stripped of everything he’d brought with him and was now wearing a bright orange jumpsuit reminiscent of the ones ISIS passed out to their beheading victims. It was soaked through to the skin and covered with mud, but the material was still capable of keeping him comfortable through the relatively warm nights.

  So he wasn’t going to starve or freeze. The question was no longer whether he could survive out there; it was how long he was going to have to do it. So far, no one had come to visit and while the cage’s lock was old and unsophisticated, it was solid. In the end, it might be boredom that got him.

  • • •

  Based on the temperature and the sound of the jungle, it was probably an hour from dawn when he heard soggy footsteps coming in his direction. Someone to let him out, hose him off, and give him a job? Someone to put a bullet in his skull? In the end, there wasn’t much he could do about it either way. He had to fight his instincts and remain passive. He was there to win a popularity contest, not perform a bunch of executions.

  The man who appeared wasn’t Esparza, which was probably a good sign. If it was going to be the bullet in the head or the blowtorch, the cartel leader would want to do it personally.

  He stopped in front of the cage, backlit by the light bleeding from the compound. A little shorter than Rapp, with a scraggly beard and a gut straining against grimy fatigues. Weaponry consisted of an AK slung over his shoulder and a Bowie knife sheathed on his right hip.

  “What?” Rapp said.

  The gun came off the man’s shoulder and he leaned it against a tree before using the knife to hack off a thick branch. When he returned, he came a little closer, but stayed out of reach.

  “California,” he managed to get out through a barely comprehensible accent. “My cousin.”

  The fact that he then shoved the branch through the widely spaced bars and into Rapp’s ribs suggested that one of the corpses currently ruining Claudia’s Airbnb rating had been a relation. Rapp feigned pain, covering his side and cramming himself into the back of the cage.

  As anticipated, the display of weakness encouraged the man. He rammed the branch in over and over as Rapp slapped ineffectually at it. The fact that this asshole hadn’t been smart enough to trim the leaves was making it impossible for him to build enough momentum to do any real damage. He seemed to realize this and instead of stepping back to fashion a more effective weapon, he decided to go for a gravity assist.

  He took a step forward and went in from the top, jabbing Rapp in the chest. The force increased a bit, but was still nowhere near what would be necessary to cause injury. Having said that, the guy seemed to just be warming up, and lying in the mud getting poked with a stick was already getting old.

  He was now only about a foot or so out of reach. The opportunity was there, but Rapp couldn’t decide if it made sense to take it. Esparza’s assistant was probably still checking out his story and getting too aggressive might be a mistake. On the other hand, letting himself get trapped in a cage for days on end might suggest that he wasn’t worth hiring.

/>   Rapp suspected he was just talking himself into it, but he quickly decided that killing this piece of shit was definitely the right course of action. He waited for the stick to come down again and instead of slapping it away, he grabbed it and pulled. The already off-balance man pitched forward, struggling to keep his footing in the slick mud.

  His right leg came into range and Rapp yanked it through a gap between the bars. The cartel enforcer made the mistake of bending at the waist to try to free himself and Rapp got hold of his beard, using it to slam his face into the top of the cage.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough leverage available to do any real damage. A thumb in the eye socket was an option, but sound was the main problem at this point. Rapp managed to use his beard and hair to spin him around and clamp a hand over his mouth. At that point, it was just a matter of getting hold of the knife.

  Ten more seconds and it was over. Rapp kept the back of the man’s head pinned securely against the bars as blood cascaded from the gash in his neck. When he finally went still, Rapp let the body slide into the mud and turned his attention to the lock. The mechanism wasn’t particularly sophisticated, but the overall build quality was depressingly solid. Prying it open with the knife wasn’t going to happen and a search of the dead man turned up no keys. Just a half a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

  Rapp needed something stiff enough to work the lock mechanism but soft enough that he could fashion it with the knife. Materials at hand were limited. Rocks were hard, but not easily carved into a pick. The jungle foliage was easy to carve, but too flexible to move the heavy tumblers.

  He pulled off one of the man’s boots and pried apart the sole, hoping to find some kind of plastic stiffener, but it was just rubber and leather.

  Why did everything have to go the hard way?

  He pulled the man’s leg inside the cage and yanked back on it, using one of the bars as a fulcrum. The quiet snap of bone sounded immediately, but he kept pulling until the jagged fracture popped through the skin.