Lethal Agent

by Flynn Vince

  “We move forward as planned,” Halabi said finally. “But be cautious.”

  “Understood.”

  Halabi disconnected the call and looked around him. They were already in the process of fleeing. While their communications were relatively secure, he couldn’t risk trying to stay in contact with Attia from a fixed position. No communications were invulnerable, and there was no telling from day to day what new capabilities the Americans could bring to bear.

  He walked to a plywood box on the floor and retrieved the pistol it contained. A Glock 19. The same model that Mitch Rapp used.

  By the time he exited the chamber, the activity in the rest of the cave system had reached a fevered pitch. Evidence of their time there was being erased, equipment was being dismantled, and supplies were being transferred to trucks waiting outside. Once loaded, the vehicles would scatter, staying on the move for some time before crossing into Ethiopia. A storm system was forecasted, bringing periods of rain and critical cloud cover over the next three days. They would take advantage of it to foil Western surveillance before finally converging on a similar cave system to the west.

  Halabi turned right when the corridor split, finally arriving at the chamber he sought.

  Gabriel Bertrand looked very different than he had only a week before. The relatively opulent surroundings he’d been provided were gone now, replaced with . . . nothing. He was sitting in the dirt with one wrist handcuffed to a bolt driven into the stone. His body and hair were filthy, streaked with mud, blood, and what appeared to be his own excrement.

  The man turned toward Halabi but his dull eyes didn’t seem to understand what they were seeing.

  “I thought you’d want to know before you die that the plan you devised is in motion.” Halabi raised the Glock. “Nothing can stop it now.”

  CHAPTER 45

  SOUTHERN MEXICO

  “BUT you’re all right?” Kennedy said, her tinny voice emanating from the satellite phone lying on the Humvee’s fender.

  “Yeah,” Rapp said, opening a cabinet at the back of the garage and fishing the vehicle’s battery from it. “For now.”

  “And you’re sure that anthrax shipment’s been neutralized?”

  On the floor near the open bay door, Carlos Esparza craned his neck, trying desperately to see what was happening. He was bound with items Rapp had found in a drawer—hands with a length of framing wire and feet with a colorful bungee cord. The bleeding in his leg had been slowed with a greasy rag and roll of duct tape.

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t matter. That was never Halabi’s play—it was a diversion.”

  “A diversion? From what?”

  “He didn’t kill all those sick villagers in Yemen. He took at least one of them and used him to infect his people with YARS. You’ve got six of them headed for the border with Muhammad Attia.”

  There was a brief pause over the line. When Kennedy came back on, she sounded uncharacteristically shaken.

  “I’m showing a roughly thirty-hour drive time to get from your position to Texas. Do you know where they are now? What their plans are?”

  “No,” Rapp said, finishing reinstalling the battery. “But I’m about to find out.”

  Esparza tried to scoot away, making it only a few centimeters before Rapp crouched down and grabbed him by the hair.

  “I don’t know anything about anthrax or Yemen!” he said in a panicked shout. “You know this. I just wanted to partner with—” His words turned to shrieks when Rapp clamped a hand around his shattered knee.

  “The only thing that comes out of your mouth from now on is answers to my questions. Is that clear?”

  “Yes! Yes, it’s clear. But I—”

  Rapp gave the wound another squeeze and once again the garage echoed with the man’s screams.

  “ ‘Yes’ was the only answer required.”

  Esparza clamped his lips together, muffling himself.

  “The Arabs, Carlos. Where are they?”

  He looked legitimately confused. “What . . . What do you mean?”

  Rapp reached for the man’s knee again and he tried to jerk away. “Stop! You killed them! You burned them.”

  “I burned an empty shed. They were already gone when I got there. And so is the van they came in.”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  Rapp retrieved a set of vise-grips off the floor and closed the jaws around the middle joint of Esparza’s right index finger. He nearly choked himself screaming as the bone was crushed flat.

  “Wrong answer, Carlos.”

  The cartel leader’s face turned pale and his eyes started to roll back in his head as he teetered at the edge of unconsciousness. He’d undoubtedly done similar things to countless men, women, and probably a few children over the years. But he wasn’t doing so well being on the receiving end. Rapp walked out of the garage and found a flowerpot that was partially full of rainwater. Emptying it onto Esparza’s head brought him back around.

  “Do you expect me to believe that your guards just let them drive out of here without your approval?”

  “Why wouldn’t they?” Esparza said, his voice barely a whisper. “I gave them a safe point of entry to Mexico and the contact information for a few coyotes who could help them cross the border. They said they wanted to handle the arrangements themselves and why wouldn’t I let them? I didn’t want them here. There was no reason for me to take on the risk of smuggling Arabs over the border. And I didn’t want them in the U.S. watching my operation.”

  “Names, Carlos. What coyotes did you put them in touch with?”

  “I . . . I don’t know for sure,” he replied, having a hard time getting in enough breath to speak. “Vicente handled those kinds of details.”

  Rapp pulled out his gun and pressed it to the man’s head. “Then I don’t need you anymore.”

  “Wait!” he shouted. “I have names. I have all of them! I just can’t tell you for sure which ones Vicente passed on. Please, Mitch. Please. Why would I lie? They used me. I want them dead as much as you.”

  Rapp holstered his weapon and went back to the Humvee to close the hood.

  “Irene. What kind of help can you get me from the Mexican government?”

  “I’m sorry, Mitch, but the answer is none. Even if our relationship with them was good at this point, the Mexican government is flooded with drug money. If we try to involve them, those coyotes are going to hear about it. And even if that wasn’t the case, their local police don’t have biohazard protocols in place. If they were to intercept Halabi’s people, how many of their personnel would be exposed? Would we be able to stop them from putting Halabi’s men in a crowded jail? What if they kill them in a public area and there’s a significant amount of blood? What if they botch the operation and scatter them? The spread of the disease isn’t stopped by borders. If this gets out it’ll—”

  “What about Gary Statham and his guys?” Rapp interjected.

  “Are you suggesting we send a U.S. military force across the Mexican border?”

  “From where I’m standing, it doesn’t seem like a bad option.”

  “Even in the most cooperative political climate imaginable that would take weeks of negotiations. And that’s not the environment we’re working in. Mitch, it’s a little after five in the morning here and the anthrax story is about to break hard. The White House is already all hands on deck trying to figure out how to mitigate the damage. In fact, I’m in a car on my way there now.”

  “Can I assume that Christine Barnett’s people are going to be doing the opposite?”

  “I think that’s a safe assumption. When the morning news shows get into full swing, all hell is going to break loose inside the Beltway.”

  Rapp grabbed Esparza by the collar and dragged him toward the vehicle. The cartel leader started to cry out in pain, but Rapp clamped a hand over his mouth.

  “What about Scott? Can you get him and his people over the border?”

  “They’re in Texas. Fully equipped and w
aiting for your orders.”

  “Brief them and tell them we’re a go,” he said, stuffing Esparza into the backseat. “And use whatever magic you’ve got left to get Gary’s team in a position to move fast.”

  “I’ll do what I can, Mitch.”

  He grabbed the phone off the Humvee’s bumper and a roll of duct tape off the floor.

  “I’m putting Esparza on.”

  Rapp leaned through the open rear door, pressing the phone to the cartel leader’s ear and securing it there with a few winds of tape.

  “There’ll be a survey at the end of this call, Carlos. I suggest you make sure you have a very satisfied customer on the other end.”

  Esparza nodded weakly, looking increasingly dazed. Part of it was blood loss, but the other part was probably the shock from how fast his life had turned to shit. Only a few hours ago, he’d been lying on satin sheets with one of his underage whores, dreaming of the billions he was going to make in the heroin business. Now he was slowly bleeding out with a phone taped to his head.

  “Mr. Esparza?” Rapp heard Kennedy say as he slammed the door and walked around to the driver’s side. Her voice was firm, but soothing. Just the tone necessary to give the man the illusion of hope.

  “I’m sure this has been a very difficult night for you, but I have some questions that need to be answered.”

  CHAPTER 46

  ARLINGTON

  VIRGINIA

  USA

  “THAT’S a lie!” Senator Christine Barnett shouted, wielding the television remote in her hand as though it were a weapon.

  There was no doubt that she was right, Kevin Gray knew. The DEA man being interviewed could barely meet the interviewer’s eye. But this was politics. Truth and lies were irrelevant. All that mattered was what people believed.

  He had arrived at Barnett’s house around 4:30 a.m., just as the Internet was starting to light up with rumors about an anthrax shipment being intercepted on the U.S. border. Now the sun was up and the newspaper article filled with the lurid details he’d leaked was in the wild. As expected, it had caught fire and was burning bright on virtually every news outlet worldwide. But like all infernos, it was proving impossible to control.

  Joshua Alexander was once again demonstrating the political cunning that had made his meteoric rise to the presidency possible. He and Irene Kennedy weren’t satisfied to absorb—or even deflect—the political blow. They were trying to turn it to their advantage.

  “Can we see?” the reporter said over the television’s speakers.

  The DEA agent grimaced in pain as he lifted his shirt and showed the deep bruising on his chest.

  “So that’s where the bullet hit your vest?”

  He nodded. “One round here and another in my back.”

  “And you were sure the vest would stop the round?”

  “Yeah,” he responded, lowering his shirt again. “Well, pretty sure anyway.”

  “That seems like an incredible risk to take.”

  An uncomfortable smile played at the edges of his mouth. “The cartels have millions of dollars to spend on technology and they spend a lot of it on surveillance. In this case, it was something we could use. It can take years to penetrate a trafficking organization with an undercover agent, but with the biothreat we didn’t have years. We had to make sure another attack wasn’t carried out and try to trace the supply chain back to ISIS. Like the old saying goes, desperate times call for desperate measures.”

  Based on the reporter’s expression, she had lost all objectivity. “I never thought I’d be sitting across a kitchen table from a card-carrying hero. But here I am.”

  The DEA man shook his head. “The American people pay my salary. It’s the job.”

  Barnett started jabbing in the air with the remote again. “Look at that son of a bitch! He’s eating this up! He and his people just went from being the morons who let someone walk away with their coke to being America’s darlings.”

  Gray felt like he was going to be sick. He didn’t have any idea how to talk his boss down and, for one of the first times in his career, he had no idea what to do.

  Barnett began compulsively changing channels, finding pretty much the same story on every one. While she was distracted, Gray pulled the phone from his pocket and pretended to check texts. In reality, he was turning on a recording app.

  Barnett landed on a station with a former FBI executive speaking to a roundtable of pundits. Even more ominous was the tiny picture-in-picture at the bottom right corner of the screen. It depicted people shuffling into the White House Briefing Room.

  “. . . next time you complain about paying taxes or start talking about how the government can’t get anything done, I want you to remember those guys getting shot for the benefit of a cartel surveillance drone.”

  “So you’re saying that CIA operative’s financial problems—his motivation for stealing those drugs—were fabricated,” the man next to him said.

  “Of course they were. The Agency would have used the IRS, SEC, and probably a number of foreign intelligence agencies to create an ironclad legend for his guy. They had to make it absolutely convincing that he’d resort to something like this. After that, I can only speculate. My best guess is that he used this to make contact with the cartel that transported the anthrax and made a case for them to hire him. It’s really incredible. This is dangerous to the point of being insane. I mean, we’re talking a ninety-nine percent chance the cartel just tortures him to death for stealing their product.”

  “Bullshit!” Barnett shouted. “That asshole isn’t just coming up with all this on his own. He and Kennedy have been friends for years. She fed it to him and sent him out on a media tour.”

  “And where do you think this man is now?” one of the interviewers asked.

  “Dead,” the FBI man answered, genuine anger audible in his voice. “If he actually managed to succeed in getting inside that cartel operation, they would have executed him the second that story leaked.”

  “And our ability to track the terrorists and cartel operations died with him,” the host said by way of a quick summary. “We’re being told that the White House press conference is about to start.”

  The screen shifted to a view of the briefing room, and Gray watched Alexander’s press secretary stride onto the podium.

  “This is going to be short,” he said and then began reading a prepared statement. “The events described in the Post this morning are largely accurate. We did intercept an anthrax shipment in San Ysidro and a CIA operative did assault three DEA volunteers in an attempt to infiltrate the cartel that had partnered with ISIS. What you don’t know is that the operation was successful. Our man was able to access the top echelons of that cartel and was using those contacts to locate Sayid Halabi and the rest of the ISIS hierarchy. He was also able to thwart a second attempt to smuggle a quantity of anthrax across our border. However, as of this morning, we’ve lost contact with him and he’s now presumed dead. Unfortunately, the information he was able to gather to date wasn’t specific or conclusive. Having said that, our law enforcement agencies are doing what they can with it. Further, the FBI has picked up the reporter who wrote the article and are questioning him about his source. There’s not much more to say at this point, other than to thank the men and women who have risked everything to keep this country safe. They won’t be forgotten.”

  Hands in the audience immediately went up and he pointed to one of them.

  “Do we know if we’ve intercepted all of the anthrax or if there could be additional attacks in process?”

  “We’re reasonably certain that the anthrax threat has been neutralized,” Alexander’s press secretary said. “But without a man inside, we can no longer monitor the situation on an ongoing basis.”

  He pointed again.

  “Can you tell us more about the operations you’re carrying out with regard to ISIS and the cartels?”

  “No,” he said and indicated another reporter.

  “Wa
s Christine Barnett aware of the existence of this undercover operative?”

  Kevin Gray stared at the television screen and held his breath. The Alexander administration tended not to like to politicize these kinds of things. Would he stay that course?

  “We had no choice but to brief the senator about the initial anthrax attack,” he said, and Gray felt his heart sink.

  Leave it there. Please, God, just leave it there.

  “She was not, however, aware of the existence of our undercover agent. That information was shared on a need-to-know basis. For reasons that should now be obvious, we were concerned with leaks.”

  Gray squeezed his eyes shut and let out a long, shaking breath. There it was. The press secretary for the president of the United States had just implied that Barnett couldn’t be trusted with sensitive information out of fear that she would leak it. And now that leak had happened.

  He barely heard the rest of the news conference or Barnett’s increasingly deranged ranting, only opening his eyes when the screen turned back to the roundtable of pundits.

  “They didn’t say their man was dead,” the host said. “Only that they lost contact with him.”

  The former FBI man shook his head in disgust. “Losing contact with an undercover agent almost always means the same thing. Take it from me—because of this newspaper article, that magnificent bastard is lying in a ditch somewhere with his throat cut.” He leaned forward, planting both elbows on the table. “I’ve been enforcing the laws of this country my entire life. But as far as I’m concerned, the law is too good for the person who leaked this. Their head should be put on a pike and marched through the streets.”

  Barnett threw the remote at the television, missing by a couple of feet and hitting the wall instead. The TV went silent and Gray focused on not throwing up. Finally, he managed to speak.

  “That’s my head he’s talking about.”

  “Quit whining,” Barnett snapped back. “That computer operating system is a hundred percent secure. God himself couldn’t trace it. What we need to focus on now is damage control. Where do we stand?”