Lethal Agent

by Flynn Vince

  “Where are we with the anthrax story?” she asked.

  The glass separating them from the driver was soundproof, but Gray still leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Our contact in the press has the information. He’s gone through it, and my understanding is that he’s satisfied.”

  “So he’s going to run with it.”

  Gray nodded, looking a little queasy. “In the next forty-eight hours, the equivalent of a nuclear bomb is going to go off in the press. Mexican cartels smuggling anthrax. NASA and dumb luck keeping it from hitting the street. A former CIA operative shooting DEA agents. It’ll be splashed across virtually every news outlet in the world.”

  “And none of it can be traced to us.”

  “If anything, it’s going to look like it came from somewhere inside the DEA.”

  “You’re sure? That bitch Irene Kennedy has eyes and ears everywhere.”

  “She’d have to be psychic. I used a brand-new laptop running a secure, open-source operating system. Heavily encrypted email from anonymous account to anonymous account. And now the laptop’s crushed and lying in a landfill.”

  Barnett nodded. In truth, the weak link was the reporter himself. Alexander and Kennedy would unquestionably accuse him of collapsing an ongoing terrorism investigation, but the clock was ticking. Even if they threw him in jail, he’d be watching the poll numbers and know that all he had to do was wait. In a few months Barnett would be president, Alexander would scramble for anonymity, and Kennedy would be on her way to prison.

  Of course, it would have been neater to have the reporter killed after his story broke and to use his death to feed a conspiracy theory implicating the CIA. But that had the potential to light a fire that she didn’t have the power to control.

  At least not yet.

  CHAPTER 41

  SOUTHERN MEXICO

  RAPP stepped out of the air-conditioning and into the late morning heat. The sun was in the process of clearing last night’s rain from the jungle, creating a palpable cloud of humidity. Esparza and Vicente Rossi were on the terrace, sitting at a shaded table.

  Security was unusually heavy, with no fewer than twenty camo-clad men in view. Many were new, raided from other cartel operations to replace the men Rapp had killed. He memorized their positions and weapons as he strode toward the table. There was an empty place setting for him, but instead of sitting at it Rapp took a position that would allow him to keep his back to the building. He wasn’t normally invited to these meetings and that, combined with the heavy security, was putting him on guard.

  “Not hungry?” Esparza said, shoveling some pineapple in his mouth.

  Rapp just shook his head and continued to watch the guards through dark sunglasses. They didn’t seem to be paying much attention to him and most didn’t look smart enough for tricks. If he was the target, he’d be getting furtive glances and Esparza wouldn’t be sitting so close.

  “Things keep getting worse for your friend Irene Kennedy. Our informants say there are a lot of rumors floating around Washington that she knew about your financial dealings and might have been involved.”

  “She can handle it. In the end, Irene always comes out on top.”

  “The story about what you did to those DEA agents still hasn’t broken. Maybe I should send CNN my drone footage. Throw a little gas on the fire.”

  Rapp just shrugged. “Why am I here? Problems with the Arabs?”

  There was a flash of anger in Esparza’s eyes. He was a man accustomed to deference, but he was also a man backed into a corner. A corner that he thought Rapp could get him out of.

  “If you’re worried about losing that package again,” Rapp continued, “I could take it over the border myself. I’ll guarantee its delivery.”

  He made certain to sound bored at the prospect of acting as a delivery boy, but beneath his vague frown, he felt very much the opposite. If he could make contact with even one of Halabi’s men in the United States, Kennedy could put multiple surveillance teams on him. Combined with penetration into phone and Internet communication, they could have eyes on the entire network within a week.

  “Fuck the Arabs,” Esparza said. “I should lose their shit again on purpose. Teach those whiny little assholes that they can’t start crying like women every time the cops get lucky.”

  “Why don’t I have a conversation with the guy that came in yesterday? I could give him a lesson on the facts of life.”

  “He’s gone,” Rossi said, searching Rapp’s face for a reaction to his statement. The former CIA man didn’t give him anything, keeping his expression dialed to bored irritation while running through a string of screamed curses in his mind.

  “Back to the Middle East?” he said, sliding an empty plate toward him and scooping some bacon onto it.

  “We’re not that lucky,” Esparza replied. “Those assholes won’t stop riding me about their lost product. They’re bringing men into a private airstrip about an hour from here. That asshole went to pick them up. He wants us to smuggle them into the U.S. to keep an eye on my distribution network.”

  Esparza slammed his fork down on the tabletop as his voice became a shout. “Piece of shit! He’s bringing in men to watch my operation? They don’t know dick about what I deal with here. They just run around the desert picking poppies and fucking goats. I have to deal with border security, the cops, the FBI, the DEA, and those pricks at the IRS. And if that wasn’t enough, now I’ve got NASA poking its nose into my operation. Fucking NASA! What do these assholes think they’re going to do about that? Attack Cape Canaveral on camels?”

  Esparza’s face had turned bright red and the sweat was starting to run down his forehead when he finally fell silent. The question seemed rhetorical but his intense gaze suggested that an answer was required.

  “I don’t know,” Rapp said honestly.

  Halabi would have already had a network in place for the first shipment of anthrax. Why bring in more people now? It was a huge risk with no apparent payoff.

  “That’s it?” Esparza said. “I don’t know? You told me you were the world’s great expert on these people.”

  “I can’t read their minds, Carlos. When he gets back, hand him over to me. I’ll get you your answers.”

  Esparza contemplated Rapp’s clean-shaven face for a moment and then slid a manila envelope across the table. “We have bigger problems than a bunch of towelheads spying on my operation.”

  “What?” Rapp said, ignoring the envelope and instead stabbing a slice of pineapple with his fork.

  “Damian Losa is trying to put the screws to me on this mall thing. He and my other partners already made enough off that deal to pay back their investment but now they want more.”

  Rapp opened the envelope and thumbed through its contents. Pictures of Losa, his houses, his security. Bios on his bodyguards, information on his family and the school his kids went to. Even a copy of the itemized bill for armoring his Range Rover.

  “Not an easy job,” Rapp said, speaking on automatic as his mind tried to make sense of Halabi’s latest move. “Losa’s got more security than the president.”

  “I’m paying you a lot of money and you don’t do anything but eat my food and kill my men. Time to step up.”

  “You want it to look like an accident? Or would you ra—”

  “I want a fucking fireball! I want people scraping him and his family off the sidewalk with a toothpick. I want to send the message that anyone who screws with me is a walking dead man.”

  “I don’t do families.”

  “You work for me.”

  “It’s unprofessional, Carlos. And I have a reputation to protect. If you want his wife and kids taken out, get one of your other people to do it. His oldest son’s nine and his wife wears three-inch heels. You must have someone who can shoot straight enough to hit targets that slow.”

  Esparza opened his mouth to respond but Rapp cut him off. “I’ll need a team. Two men should do it. I have people in mind.”

  “A t
eam? That comes out of your pocket.”

  Rapp smiled and dabbed his mouth with his napkin. “Not how it works, Carlos. Expenses are yours.”

  “You’re not the only killer in the world.”

  “Then bring in a second-stringer who’ll work on the cheap. But if they screw up—if Damian Losa survives—he’s going to come down on you like the wrath of God. You’ve got one chance at this and you can afford precisely a zero percent chance of failure. I—and only I—can provide that.”

  Esparza’s temper flared again and again he managed to control it. The man was in an even tighter box than Rapp had imagined. Losa and the other cartels were breathing down his neck, his marijuana operation had hit serious headwinds, his cocaine cultivation initiative was years from providing any real benefit, and his foray into Middle Eastern heroin was bogging down. The cartel leader was stretched to the breaking point and he knew it.

  Before anyone could speak again, the sound of a motor started to separate itself from the hum of the jungle. The guards all straightened and pulled their weapons off their shoulders.

  Esparza walked to the edge of the terrace, watching a white panel van approach from the west. It went as far as it could on the worsening road, finally pulling beneath the trees at the edge of the compound. Attia jumped out of the driver’s side and went to the back, opening a set of double doors to let the passengers out.

  Rapp took a position next to Esparza and examined them as they began filing up the road. Six in all, no fighters. Two were probably in their mid-fifties, another in his late teens. There was even a woman—hunched as she covered her mouth and tried to suppress a cough. These weren’t people trained to keep tabs on Esparza’s operation. They had been chosen for their ability to blend in—to move through America unchallenged. But to what end? Suicide bombers? That seemed a little mundane after all the trouble Halabi had gone through to hype his biological attack.

  “These are the people they sent to spy on your ops?” Rapp said, trying to prompt Esparza to break his silence. When it didn’t work, he pressed a little harder.

  “These aren’t traffickers. Look at them. There’s something going on here and we need to figure out what it is.”

  “I don’t give a shit what they look like. I just want this deal done.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “I didn’t ask you what you think!” he shouted. “They told us we’re supposed to keep our distance and that’s what we’re going to do.”

  “What do you mean ‘keep our distance’?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they think we’re going to corrupt them. Give them a drink and some pork or something. Either way, no one’s supposed to get any closer than ten meters and they wanted them to be housed as far from the compound as possible. Fuck ’em. I just cleared out the main equipment shed. If they want to sleep on the ground in there, let ’em.”

  Just as he finished speaking, one of the older men started coughing. It wasn’t the light hack the woman had displayed a few moments before, though. The convulsions doubled him over. Two men grabbed him by the arms and kept him moving forward as the pieces began clicking together in Rapp’s mind.

  Halabi’s men hadn’t killed all the people in that Yemeni village like their propaganda films depicted. They’d taken them and used them to keep the virus alive. And now this innocuous group of people would be smuggled across the border where they’d infiltrate airports and stadiums and restaurants—anywhere people gathered in large numbers.

  He remembered the briefing he’d gotten on the YARS virus before he’d gone to that village. The warnings about touching even the charred remains of the buildings. The fear in the voice of the famously unflappable Gary Statham.

  “Mitch . . .” Esparza said. “Mitch!”

  Rapp finally tore his gaze from the place where the Arabs had disappeared into the jungle, fighting to keep his expression neutral. “What?”

  “Forget these pricks. They’re just noise. Losa’s the only thing you need to worry about right now. Once he’s gone, I’ll be back in the driver’s seat.”

  CHAPTER 42

  A HAND gripped Carlos Esparza’s shoulder and gave it a weak shake. He came out of his light sleep but didn’t bother opening his eyes. He could neither feel the heat of the sun angling through the windows nor hear the sounds of the staff preparing for the new day. It was still the middle of the night.

  “Go back to sleep or get out.”

  The girl was young, beautiful, and blessed with an unusual level of sexual enthusiasm. Other than that, though, she was a complete pain in the ass. Sleep was hard enough to come by these days without some seventeen-year-old whore jabbing at him.

  It seemed that everything that could go wrong had gone wrong over the course of just a few months. On the positive side, though, problems that arose so quickly could recede at a similar pace. He’d get the Arabs and their product into the United States without incident this time and then the heroin profits would start flowing. Rapp would deal with Losa. And then he would deal with Rapp. It would be a shame, but unavoidable. When Christine Barnett became president of the United States, she would make Rapp public enemy number one. It would be too much heat for his organization to bear.

  The question was whether to kill Rapp or make a deal with the U.S. government to turn him over. His impression of Barnett was that she was even more corrupt and power hungry than the Mexican politicians he dealt with on a day-to-day basis. And while the mundane bribes he was accustomed to paying out wouldn’t interest her, Mitch Rapp in chains was another matter. Certainly there could be little harm in having the gratitude of the world’s most powerful leader.

  He let his head sink deeper into his pillow, putting the matter out of his mind and starting to drift again. One problem at a time.

  The hand gripped him again, this time tighter. He was about to swat at the girl but then heard a harsh whisper.

  “Carlos! Wake up!”

  The sound of Vicente Rossi’s voice jolted him awake. What was the man doing in his bedroom? Instinctively, he reached for the bedside lamp, but Rossi slapped his hand away.

  The girl next to him rolled onto her back. “Carlos, are you—”

  Rossi lurched forward and clamped a hand over her mouth. “Be silent, bitch! Stay still and don’t speak! Do you understand?”

  Esparza saw the vague outline of her head move up and down before his assistant pulled back.

  “What the fuck are you doing in here?” he whispered, trying to get control of the situation while his heart pounded uncomfortably in his chest. “Is it Losa? Are we—”

  “Shut up!” Rossi said, pulling a phone from his pocket. The screen lit up, bathing the gaunt face of his assistant in a dull blue light.

  “What—”

  “Read it,” Rossi ordered.

  Esparza looked at the phone, scanning a headline about the interception of anthrax on the U.S. border. “A news story? You woke me up for this? What the—”

  “Don’t talk. Read!”

  Esparza took the phone and scanned through the story, his anger flaring when he reached the part stating that the intercept had been made at the San Ysidro mall.

  “Those motherfuckers,” he said under his breath.

  The Arabs he was dealing with weren’t heroin traffickers. They were terrorists trying to use his network to smuggle a bioweapon into the United States.

  “Tell the guards to go to the shed and kill every one of—”

  “Forget the Arabs!”

  Esparza fell into confused silence.

  “You trusted Mitch Rapp enough to hire him based on one thing and one thing only. You believe that a man like him doesn’t care about drug trafficking.” Rossi tapped the screen. “But he does care about this.”

  • • •

  Mitch Rapp stood motionless and listened to the jungle around him. The hum of insects. The quiet rustling of leaves created by a breeze too light to feel. The rhythmic dripping of water.

  The only practical way
out of Esparza’s house without being seen was through a narrow strip of bushes that extended all the way to the walls. Rapp had climbed out a window when two guards briefly abandoned their posts to share a cigarette. Slipping beneath the foliage, he’d spent the next hour and a half inching along the power conduit it hid. Finally, he’d made it to the jungle.

  And that’s where he was still, looking back at the dark compound. Esparza ran his security in two twelve-hour shifts, with all posts manned around the clock and three additional roaming guards at night. The problem was that none of those men were currently visible. All posts now appeared to be empty and everything was silent. On the surface, that lack of guards would seem to be a good thing. But it was unexpected. And he hated unexpected.

  Coming up with a coherent strategy to handle this situation had turned out to be harder than he’d anticipated. His first plan had been to get to Rossi’s phone, but it was an idea that didn’t hold up under examination. Assuming he could get into Rossi’s room undetected and assuming Rossi had a phone capable of connecting internationally without Esparza’s authority, what then? Call Kennedy for the cavalry? Based on his last conversation with Esparza, she was fighting for her political life. And he wasn’t in Iraq or Afghanistan. This was Mexico, a country that wouldn’t take kindly to a bunch of U.S. troops rolling in unannounced.

  Further, the threat he faced wasn’t just a shed full of bioweapons; it was a shed full of bioweapons that could think and move on their own. If they made it out of here, the shit was going to hit the fan in a way that no one had seen for more than a century.

  In light of all that, there was no point in trying to get fancy. Better to just shoot them all, close their bodies up in the shed, and set it on fire. Nice and neat on the bioweapon front but it did leave one small loose end.

  Him.

  He didn’t need Gary Statham to tell him that if he went into that building and started splattering blood around, he had a high probability of being infected. So when this was over, he couldn’t risk any human contact at all. No going back to the house. No fighting with guards. No getting to a phone. At best, his next two weeks would be spent living barricaded in a muddy cave in the mountains. At worst, his next two weeks would be spent dying barricaded in a muddy cave in the mountains.