Lethal Agent

by Flynn Vince

  “If you’re suggesting he was taking contract killing jobs on the side, Senator, I doubt that’s the case. Much more likely, he simply siphoned funds from the terrorist organizations he broke up. They themselves have extremely complex financial structures and it wouldn’t be hard to hide those kinds of transactions.”

  “But this house of cards he built,” Barnett said, still trying to find her footing. “It was constructed while he was officially working for the CIA. Isn’t that right? While he was under your supervision.”

  Kennedy took a sip of water and focused on staying in character. Avoiding personal responsibility and abandoning Mitch Rapp were two things antithetical to who she was. But, for now, there was no other way.

  “Obviously, I’m the director of the CIA, so everything that happens there is within my purview. Having said that, the monitoring of our agents is largely the responsibility of an independent division within the Agency. They work under a very specific set of parameters, all of which were adhered to in this case. The problem seems to be that Mr. Rapp covered his tracks extremely well. His money was held in countries that we have a hard time seeing into, and his ownership interests in foreign businesses were hidden behind a maze of offshore shell corporations and partnerships.”

  “So, you’re saying that, as the director of the CIA, you take no responsibility for any of this?”

  “The Agency’s oversight infrastructure works independently from the office of the director. That independence is critical to their success and credibility. In light of what’s happened, though, I’d agree that the system needs to be reviewed.”

  • • •

  Christine Barnett entered her office, nearly catching Kevin Gray’s leg when she slammed the door.

  “Backstabbing bitch!”

  “Calm down, Senator. It may—”

  “Calm down? What the hell are you talking about, Kevin? Everyone in town whispers about Irene Kennedy like she’s Joan of Arc. We went in there counting on the fact that she’d fall on her sword for her lifelong friend, the great Mitch Rapp. And what do we find out? She’s just another politician covering her ass.”

  “We’ve still got—”

  “And then that dipshit Hansen hands her the keys to the handcuffs!” She imitated the man’s buttery drawl. “ ‘Is it possible that he acted alone?’ ”

  “Mitch Rapp was the CIA’s top operative for years, Senator, and in that time he stole millions of dollars. The fact that he was technically a contractor when he murdered those two men—”

  “Were you not listening, Kevin?”

  “Of course I—”

  “Rapp killed two terrorism suspects. And his money didn’t come from stealing from the government, it came from stealing from extremists. Why would voters give a shit about that?”

  “He didn’t kill those men to stop a terrorist attack, Senator. Like you said in your last meeting with Kennedy, he probably did it to figure out how to get top dollar for the drugs he was going to steal. And he didn’t take the money from those terrorist organizations to starve them of funds. He took it to line his own po—”

  “Too complicated!” she shouted. “The average American is barely smart enough to tie his own shoes. Do you really expect them to follow complex motivations and offshore shell corporations? In order for them to know who to hate, we need to tell them in a way they can understand. A strong, simple narrative. One sentence. No words more than two syllables.”

  “We weren’t going to get hold of the news cycle anytime soon anyway. This morning’s school shooting is sucking all the air out of the room.”

  “How many kids?”

  “It’s bad. Twenty-one dead and another seven wounded.”

  “So we get backseated and the anthrax story—”

  “—was already starting to fade,” Gray said, finishing her sentence. “The videos ISIS is putting out are just remixes of footage everyone’s seen before.”

  “If we’re going to keep people focused on this administration’s inability to protect them, Halabi’s going to need to get off his ass and do something more than make movies.”

  “I’m not sure we should be wishing that on ourselves, Senator.”

  She dropped into the chair behind her desk. “Don’t turn into a Boy Scout on me again, Kevin.”

  “You’re way out in the lead, Sen—”

  “I don’t want to be in the lead!” she shouted. “I want to win the election in such a landslide that everyone in Washington drops to their knees and kisses my ass. Do you understand?”

  Judging by his expression, he didn’t.

  Kevin Gray was a hell of a political operative but, like everyone in his profession, he saw the winning of the presidency as an end, not a beginning. A seat in the Oval Office was a guarantee of pomp and circumstance, but not the guarantee of real power that most people suspected. As a woman, she’d have to fight for that. She’d have to tear it from the hands of the powerful men who had dominated the country since it was founded.

  “The shooting of those DEA agents got some coverage,” Gray said. “But because they survived and the identity of the shooter hasn’t been released, not as much coverage as we hoped. We could leak that the perpetrator was a former CIA operative and that he also murdered two drug traffickers. Maybe hint that Kennedy could be involved. Everyone knows how close she and President Alexander are. It could get us—”

  “Absolutely nothing,” Barnett said, finishing his sentence. “In the current news cycle, that story wouldn’t make an AM radio station in Bumfuck, Kansas.”

  “Then we wait,” he said, not bothering to hide his frustration. “When things slow down, a story like that could get some traction. No question it’ll get the attention of conspiracy theorists and Russian Internet trolls. They’re always looking to give the Agency a black eye.”

  “We’re losing control of this thing, Kevin. We’ve got a story about incompetence and corruption in this administration that we can spin into full-on hysteria. We can’t let it get hijacked by some basement dweller who walked into a school with a gun. We’re going to end up spending the next month running in circles debating gun control.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to do,” Gray said. “I can only work with what I’ve got.”

  She remained silent for almost a minute, calculating the pros and cons of every possible action. Finally she spoke.

  “For now we forget about trying to tie Rapp to Kennedy. Instead we leak that the DEA intercepted the anthrax. We show the American voter that this administration allowed ISIS to transport a biological weapon across the U.S. border and the only thing that saved us was dumb luck. We tell them that Halabi’s making another batch and that the administration has been keeping it secret from the American people. That Alexander’s preventing our citizens from taking steps to protect themselves because he doesn’t want to look bad in the press.”

  “I strongly disagree with that course of action, Senator. Leaking a former CIA agent’s involvement in what happened in California is one thing. But this is an ongoing terrorist investigation. That’s why the administration is keeping it secret—they’re trying to track the supply line back to Halabi. If he discovers that the authorities know about the anthrax he could—”

  “He could what? Run? How does that hurt me? The last thing I need is Alexander standing on a podium saying that he tracked down Halabi and put a bullet in his eye.”

  “Senator, this is—”

  “Shut up and do it, Kevin.”

  “It’s going to take some time. We’ll use the same procedures as before, but this leak is a whole other level. If it were ever traced back to us . . .” He fell silent, leaving the ramifications to her imagination.

  CHAPTER 37

  SOUTHERN MEXICO

  “IT’S all opportunity now,” Esparza said, swerving his custom Humvee around a rut in the dirt road. “Your politicians are just actors. They shout all day about drugs and illegal immigrants but they don’t want to fix the problem. They
just want to keep their voters angry while not pissing anyone off by taking away their coke or maid. All that shit you talk about us up north . . . separating children from their parents, the wall . . . it’s a perfect storm. It puts our politicians in a position that they have to push back. And that doesn’t just mean they look the other way. These days I’ve got more government assistance than I know what to do with. I mean, I pay. Don’t get me wrong. And the last local government piece of shit who turned on me got to watch my guys gang-rape his daughter. But even if I didn’t do any of that, a lot of our bureaucrats would screw the Americans for the hell of it.”

  Rapp focused on the edges of the jungle from the passenger seat. In all likelihood it didn’t contain any imminent threats, but there was no way to know that for sure. He had no sense of his operating environment, no sense of Esparza’s position in the current drug trafficking hierarchy, and no idea what was happening in America or the rest of the world.

  “So you’re looking to take the opportunity to expand,” Rapp prompted. Esparza had been running his mouth nonstop for the entire drive, but so far hadn’t said anything useful. Mostly bragging about his business genius and the meteoric growth of his operation.

  “Hell yes, I’m going to take advantage. The Arab heroin is going to be big for us. The American government’s doing its normal screwup job dealing with your oxycodone problems—half because your politicians are morons and half because they’ve got their heads completely up the pharmaceutical companies’ asses.” He paused for dramatic effect. “And you saw the coke plantation.”

  Rapp just nodded. He’d spent the better part of the week roaming around Esparza’s compound, eating María’s food, and drinking fresh-squeezed fruit juice. He had no access to phones, television, or computers. Discussions with Esparza tended to be centered on his excessively ambitious business plans and his passion for young girls. Unfortunately, the former subject tended to be overly vague and the latter overly detailed.

  “That crop has been even more successful than we thought,” Vicente Rossi said from the backseat. “It’s obviously a long-term investment but within ten years we expect to have converted it into a significant profit center.”

  Again, Rapp didn’t respond. The trail that led to Sayid Halabi was getting colder every day. He just didn’t have the patience for this undercover shit.

  “You didn’t bring me out here to talk about profit centers,” Rapp said finally. “Where are we going?”

  Esparza glanced at his assistant in the rearview mirror. An out-of-character nervous tic.

  “A meeting.”

  “Details, Carlos. Give me details.”

  The cartel leader’s jaw tightened in anger, causing his response to sound a bit strangled. “We negotiated the terms of it more than a month ago, but since then things have gone to shit. The asshole we’re going to see is named Damian Losa. He’s an arrogant, aristocratic prick who’s huge but flies way under the radar. He’s doing probably a little over a billion U.S. dollars a year gross between blow, heroin, and weed. And that doesn’t include his aboveboard businesses. He’s got car dealerships in Iowa and factories in England. Son of a bitch gives money to museums and shit.”

  “What’s he to me?” Rapp said.

  When Esparza didn’t answer, Rossi stepped in. “Losa was one of the main investors in that mall in San Ysidro. It’s one of a number of projects financed and operated by a cooperative of cartels presided over by Mr. Losa. His idea was to reduce the fighting between individual organizations by creating joint enterprises. As you can imagine, he isn’t happy about it being discovered.”

  “Didn’t NASA find that tunnel?” Rapp said. “How can he blame you for that? Shit happens.”

  Again Esparza didn’t respond, instead concentrating on avoiding the branches on either side of the dirt track.

  “The construction of the San Ysidro mall was overseen by our organization,” Rossi said.

  “So? From everything I heard, you knocked it out of the park. The DEA was talking about that tunnel like it was the eighth wonder of the world.”

  “Yes,” Rossi said, drawing out the word. “But the mall was meant to be a money-laundering operation.”

  Rapp considered that for a moment. “So you’re telling me that the tunnel was something you added without telling Losa and the other cartels?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “So a megamillion-dollar money-laundering operation just went up in smoke, a number of American politicians have been exposed for taking cartel money, and a huge number of offshore corporations are now being investigated because you decided to add a smuggling operation on the down low.”

  “I think that’s a fair summary,” Rossi said in a tone that suggested he’d disapproved of their little improvisation. “We—”

  “It was sitting there like a fat whore!” Esparza shouted suddenly. “If I don’t take opportunities like that, someone else will. Where would that leave me?”

  “Alive,” Rapp said, turning his attention back to a jungle that was suddenly looking a lot more threatening than it had thirty seconds before. “Tell me about the meet.”

  “It’s in a natural clearing in neutral territory. The land around it is mostly open and we’ve had drones flying overhead for two days now. No suspicious activity. Each of us can bring two men. It’ll be fine. And this’ll give you an opportunity to get a good look at Losa.”

  “Why?” Rapp asked, though he suspected he knew the answer.

  “Because you’re going to kill him. He’s not going to let this go and I’m not going to wait for one of his people to slit my throat in my sleep. We need to move first.”

  “Are you saying you want to do this today? At the meeting?”

  “No. The area’s controlled by another cartel that’s guaranteed our safety. If we move against him here, we might not make it home. Next month will be soon enough.”

  “Next month,” Rapp repeated.

  “Is that a problem? I hired a miracle worker, right? Isn’t that what you told me? You didn’t think I was paying you three million dollars a year to eat my food and work out in my gym. My private gym.”

  Rapp let out a long breath. This was bullshit. He was getting no closer to Halabi and now he was being driven into a possible ambush orchestrated by a man who sounded more like the CEO of General Motors than a drug lord. Time to end this.

  He reached for the Glock 19 he’d been provided, keeping his movements slow and casual. He’d find a place for them to pull into the jungle, locate a quiet spot, and go to work on these two pricks. Rossi would crack at the first face slap and, for all his swagger, Esparza wouldn’t last much longer. In an hour, Rapp would be using the late cartel leader’s bejeweled sat phone to send Irene Kennedy everything the two men knew about ISIS.

  “But first I need some help with the Arabs, ” Esparza said.

  Rapp hesitated, finally withdrawing his hand from the weapon and returning it to the armrest.

  “I’m listening.”

  “The first shipment from our Middle Eastern supplier got confiscated in the mall bust. It was actually part of the shipment you stole—a dry run to show them what our distribution system could do.”

  “And?”

  “The towelheads have access to good product but they’re complete assholes to deal with. They don’t understand shit about the smuggling business and got all twisted up over us losing their package.”

  I’ll bet they did, Rapp thought.

  When Esparza spoke again, his voice had lost some of its bravado. “Look, this heroin angle could mean a lot of money for me, and with what happened in San Ysidro, it needs to work.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, you understand them, right? You speak their language and everything.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you could explain that what happened is just part of doing business and that no one else could do any better. Make sure they’re not trying to find another organization to partner with.”


  After a week of feeling Halabi slipping away, Rapp could suddenly picture his head in the sights of his Glock again. “Sure. I could fly over and tell them how things work in the real world. Maybe help coordinate their shipments.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Rossi said, leaning up between the seats. “They’re flying in a representative with another small shipment.”

  “Right. All you need to do is talk his gibberish, kiss Allah’s ass, and whatever else it takes to get his confidence. This time the product will get through. I guarantee it.”

  Rapp nodded and further relaxed his gun hand. While it wasn’t Sayid Halabi’s home address and a spare cruise missile, it was enough to work with. Esparza and Rossi had just earned themselves a temporary reprieve.

  • • •

  Esparza pulled into a gap in the foliage that looked like it had been recently cut. Beyond there was a small clearing with three men visible in the shade of its northern edge.

  “That’s him,” Esparza said, without looking. “In the middle.”

  Damian Losa looked to be in his mid-fifties, with a trim waist, nice but not over-the-top clothing, and immaculate gray hair. The men on either side of him were just muscle, but even at a distance it was clear they were high-class muscle. Probably Eastern European. Almost certainly former spec ops. Whether there were a hundred more like them in the trees was yet to be seen. Relying on Esparza’s surveillance team wasn’t all that comforting but there wasn’t a choice at this point.

  They got out of the vehicle and Esparza indicated for him and Rossi to hang back while he started for the center of the clearing. Losa began to do the same but then one of his men grabbed his arm. Rapp moved a hand closer to his weapon, but it seemed that all he wanted to do was whisper in his boss’s ear. He gave a brief response before walking to meet Esparza.

  The conversation seemed to go about the way Rapp had imagined. Esparza was animated, waving his hands around and speaking in a loud voice, while Losa nodded and answered too quietly to be heard at a distance.

  More interesting was that one of Losa’s guards had broken away from his companion and was edging around the clearing. Again, Rapp moved a hand toward his weapon, but then the man got close enough to make out his features.