by Vince Flynn
Rapp wasn’t so sure, but he stuck with what he knew. “Someone, or more likely several men, hit the safe house, and they were extremely precise in their shots. Rick is then taken only a few hundred yards to another house, presumably by the same guys. The interrogation begins and a few days into it Rick dies. The third guy, who is obviously in charge, gets upset and empties a fifteen-round magazine into these two goons who screwed up.”
“And your point is?” O’Brien asked as if all of this made perfect sense.
“We’re shooters,” Rapp said, waving his thumb back and forth between Hurley and himself. “If we had hit that safe house it would have been no different. One shot in each guy’s head. If we’d brought Scott along with his guys, there would have been some double taps . . . but my point is there’s always a pattern. Good shooters are disciplined shooters. It doesn’t matter how mad we get, we don’t empty magazines into people just because we’re pissed off.”
All eyes moved to Hurley to assess what he thought. He ran his finger along his dry lips and nodded. “He has a point.”
“I think this could be an exception,” O’Brien said. “Going through what they went through to get Rick and then having him die after they’d broken him, but had only scratched the surface.” O’Brien thought of himself in the same situation. “I might lose my focus for a second or two.”
“Let me try it this way. The people who hit the safe house were pros. The two goons who beat up Rick were not pros. You can see it in the way they move. The third guy,” Rapp shook his head, “he’s a different story. When I watch him on the video I can’t help but think he’s putting on an act for the camera.”
“That’s a bit of a stretch, Mitch,” Kennedy said.
“It might be, but have you guys heard about the ballistics from the safe house?” They all shook their heads no, so Rapp continued. “Three of the bodyguards were shot in the center of the forehead with nine-millimeter rounds. All of them were on the first floor. The fourth guard was shot in the back of the head with a .45 caliber round. He was on the second floor moving toward the stairs, probably responding to the commotion downstairs. Rick’s personal sidearm was a Kimber .45.”
“I heard some rumblings about this,” O’Brien said in obvious disagreement. “I think the fourth guard was the inside guy and Rick found out at the last minute and shot him.”
“And the security system getting bypassed?”
“The bodyguards had the codes to arm and disarm it.”
“But, they didn’t have the codes to take it off-line. To shut the whole thing down, cameras and all . . . only Rick could have done something like that, or Marcus. Not a bunch of clowns from the Taliban.”
“They lived with Rick,” Kennedy said. “It would be entirely plausible for one of them to pick up on the codes.”
“Okay, how about the safe?” Rapp said. “It was opened without any coercion. Sid checked it out. There was blood all over the hallway on the second floor but not a speck on the safe. She makes a very strong point that the safe was opened by someone who had not been injured. At first I assumed Rick just wasn’t very tough, they put a gun to his head, and he opened the safe. Well, if you believe everything you see in that video we find out he’s pretty damn tough. They would have had to slap him silly to get him to open that safe and there would have been some blood.”
“I don’t know, Mitch,” Stofer said, shaking his head. “It’s pretty thin.”
“I know it is, but you guys, come on . . . think about this for a minute. Put your covert ops hats on and think about how we plan stuff. The lengths we go to, to lay down deceptions to make something look a certain way when our main objective is something entirely different.”
Kennedy was all for open discussion, but this type of thinking was what led to the old puzzle palace mentality where every other person in the building was a mole. “Are you trying to say Rick was in on this? That he orchestrated his own kidnapping and then endured that horrific beating and that he’s still alive?”
Rapp knew how preposterous it sounded, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was some piece of information that he couldn’t access that would explain his suspicions. He stood and walked over to the window. “I’m not sure what I think.”
“Mitch, I think you’re way out on a limb here.” O’Brien was shaking his head in disagreement.
Rapp turned to face the big Irishman. “Have you read Sid’s preliminary report?”
“No.”
“Read it. Study the photos from the safe house. Look at the precision. Put yourself in the shoes of the people that were trying to get their hands on Rick. It was perfect.”
“I’m not saying it wasn’t,” O’Brien said, refusing to see things Rapp’s way.
“Now look at the other part of this. The same group of professionals fuck up, kill Rick, and then kill each other.”
“That’s what we saw on the tape. It’s pretty hard to argue with.”
“It sure is. The same cool customers that took down our safe house go completely mental just a few days later and manage to capture it on a camcorder and leave it behind for us to find.”
“Heat of the moment. Not everyone thinks as clearly as you do in pressure situations.”
“And some people are devious as all hell,” Rapp said. “We’re seeing what we’re seeing because we want to. The alternative is fucking horrible. Rick is still alive and he’s spilling the family jewels.” Rapp moved back to his chair and said, “Can any of you honestly tell me that you weren’t relieved when you saw Rick die in that clip?”
They all shook their heads.
“Our lives got significantly easier.”
“Mitch,” Stofer said, “I kind of see your point, but these terrorists aren’t always the sharpest tools in the shed. That they screwed up and their failure benefited our larger strategic goals doesn’t mean we’re being duped.”
“I know,” Rapp said, “but I can’t shake the feeling that we’re not out of the woods. We need to take a top-to-bottom look at this. We need to figure out what happened to all of the money Rick was spreading around. Where the hell is his laptop, and do we have any idea what was on it? And the whole time we’re looking we’d better be asking ourselves one question.”
“What’s that?” Kennedy said.
“What if they wanted us to find that camcorder?”
“Oh, come on.” It was O’Brien. “This is so thin.”
Kennedy had her eyes on Hurley. She could tell he was taking a trip down memory lane, accessing his large database of real-life experiences. “Stan, what are you thinking?”
Hurley didn’t hear the question right away. His mind was elsewhere, thinking about the way the game used to be played. “I think Mitch might have a point . . . then again he could be totally wrong, but we can’t afford not to explore it.”
“I’m not sure we can afford to explore it,” O’Brien said. “The harsh truth is that Rick is dead and a lot of people want him to stay that way.”
Hurley started to grumble the way he did when he was about to get angry. After saying a few things to himself he said, “So our new protocol on shit like this is to stick our heads in the sand? That’s one of the dumbest fucking things I’ve ever heard.”
An outsider would be left to think that O’Brien would be wounded by Hurley’s harsh words, but they’d all worked with him so long they didn’t take the rebukes personally.
“Take this thing back to the beginning,” Hurley said, “and it looks like we were being played. I don’t think the Taliban are sophisticated enough to have done this. They may have played a role . . . provided some manpower, they may have even taken down the safe house, but they sure as hell didn’t hire Gould. Whoever was behind this moved pieces around the chessboard like the Soviets used to do. They knew Mitch enough that they could dangle that information in front of him about the dog and he’d jump on it. They had to have been monitoring Hubbard, because minutes after he told Mitch where the vet’s office was, they put Gould into play
and called in their corrupt police general to clean up the mess. That’s not the Taliban. Way too complicated.”
Stofer looked confused. “Are you saying the Russians are behind this?”
Hurley shrugged. He hadn’t thought that specifically, but anything was possible. “I don’t know who’s behind it, but whoever it is, is one devious bastard. They set this thing up and played us. I’m inclined to agree with Mitch. Anyone who goes to that much trouble doesn’t leave the bodies and camera for us to find unless they want us to find them.”
Kennedy felt another headache coming, and it wasn’t because she was mad at Hurley and Rapp, it was because she knew they were right. They had been suckered into thinking they had dodged a bullet. O’Brien started to argue with Hurley and Rapp. Kennedy stood and walked back to her desk. None of them noticed. She opened her top left drawer and grabbed a bottle of Tylenol. She tapped out two little red pills into her hand and washed them down with a drink of water.
“Gentlemen,” she said. They ignored her, so she raised her voice until they all stopped talking and turned their heads in her direction. “We need his body. Until then we are going to work on the assumption that he is alive.” She saw O’Brien start to open his mouth and her hand shot out like a traffic cop’s. “Our official stance is that he’s dead. But unofficially, we are going to start digging, if for no other reason than to find out which intelligence agency was behind this.”
Rapp stood, feeling full of energy for the first time since he’d woken up in the hospital. He buttoned his suit coat and said, “And when we find out who was behind this?”
“We will send them a very personal message.”
CHAPTER 45
FBI HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
JOEL Wilson didn’t mind that his entire career was in the balance. At least that was the conclusion he’d come to while shaving in the morning. Rather than crumble, he took it as a challenge. Washington was a universally corrupt town and that corruption did not stop at the doors of the FBI. Wilson had been fighting it his entire career, and although there were times like this, when he felt as if he was the only noble person in the building, that he took solace in the fact that there were men like Senator Cal Ferris who understood what was at stake.
Now the big question was, When was Ferris going to jump in and save him? The senator was cautious to a point, and then he came out with both guns blazing—usually on TV. Ferris’s strategy was growing on him. Director Miller had made a tactical error when he recalled the team from Afghanistan. It was now documented that he had interfered in an important investigation and had plainly come down on the side of the CIA. This was the type of toehold that Ferris could use to drag Miller before the Judicial Committee when the time was right. And Wilson would be the star witness.
Wilson didn’t like playing down his relationship with Ferris. Especially this morning, when it seemed entirely possible that his career was about to suffer serious harm. Washington, in general, was sympathetic to Kennedy’s plight, but that would all change when the truth came out about Rickman and Rapp. The misuse of government funds was a serious crime, but the brazenness with which Rickman and Rapp had abused the trust Congress afforded to the black side of intelligence was nothing short of a major breach in national security. Wilson speculated that they were the tip of the iceberg. Others in the Clandestine Service were likely involved. Wilson’s next move if he stayed in his post was to look into John Hubbard. Was it possible that Mitch Rapp had killed Hubbard for fear that he was about to expose him? Could Rapp have been behind Rickman’s abduction and execution—again to protect himself, or to take all of the money they had been ferreting away?
Anything was possible when discussing these clandestine warriors. They were a bunch of degenerates. If they weren’t working for the CIA, a good number of them would be criminals. During Wilson’s fitful night’s sleep he considered whistle-blower status. While the idea, in a grand operatic sense, was appealing, it was also extremely risky. Martyrs in Washington were always vilified by one side of the aisle and sanctified by the other. It would be a tough slog, probably three to four years. In the end, either he would be disgraced and unemployable, with his pension gone, or he would receive a gigantic eight-figure judgment and become a mini celebrity with the antimilitary intelligence establishment. He’d probably even have a movie made about his gutsy decision to speak truth to power. The lure of Hollywood, a book deal, and publicly exposing the corruption at Langley was extremely tempting.
It wasn’t that Wilson lacked confidence in his abilities. He truly believed he was better than any three people in this town, but the CIA was more than three people. It was a building filled with individuals whose job it was to lie, cheat, and steal. They couldn’t be trusted to wage any kind of war in a fair, honorable way. No, Wilson feared, he might be able to use the whistle-blower statute to scare his bosses, but it wouldn’t intimidate the CIA for a second. They would find a way to win in the end. If this got worse, Wilson would have to get the media involved. It was his only hope for success.
It was nice to have Ferris in his corner, but the FBI was still an organization with rules and regulations and a very strong chain of command. Wilson had wandered off into dangerous territory in order to keep Hargrave in the dark. Technically, the old coot had him, but Wilson had a few surprises in store for him. It was all going to come down to Director Miller and how much latitude he was willing to give him.
Wilson was sitting in the director’s outer office trying his best to ignore the hulking bodyguards and predict how his bosses would come after him. He’d been waiting for more than an hour, which could not be a good sign. Director Miller was militant when it came to punctuality. Hargrave, with a stick up his ass, was sure to have everything documented. Wilson could see him in there right now, with his ridiculously bushy eyebrows, pompously and meticulously going over every perceived transgression. Wilson was filled with hatred for the man and was putting the final brushstrokes on his plan to take him down when Director Miller’s personal assistant told him it was time to go in.
Wilson stood and picked up his briefcase. The secretary was a very attractive brunette with brown bedroom eyes. Wilson flashed her a smile and said, “So this must be what they felt like before they were led to the gallows.”
The woman ignored his attempt at humor with a blank stare and then turned her attention to her computer screen. Wilson, in a rare moment of insecurity, wondered if she was privy to his transgressions and had already passed judgment. He straightened his tie and prepared for the onslaught. As he put his hand on the doorknob he told himself that there would come a day where this repugnant little woman and a lot of other people would be apologizing to him.
Wilson stepped into the office, closed the door, and tried to remain confident as he faced the people arrayed around the twenty-person conference table. Wilson had expected Director Miller and Hargrave, and maybe someone from the General Counsel’s Office, but he didn’t expect to see Lisa Williams, the director of the Intelligence Division, and Jason Smith, who ran the Office of Congressional Affairs. Perhaps the most ominous sign, however, was the presence of Wilson’s direct boss, David Taylor, who was on medical leave after back surgery. As he took a quick glance at the five faces, he didn’t find a welcoming or supportive expression among them.
Wilson fought the urge to sit at the far end of the table across from Director Miller. The distance would have made things even more awkward, so he picked his way down the right side of the long table and grabbed the seat next to David Taylor. Wilson set his briefcase on the floor and looked at Taylor, who was wearing a white plastic clamshell that encased his upper body from his neck down to his torso. The device was Velcroed into place at the shoulders and on the sides. Taylor looked extremely uncomfortable.
“How are you feeling?” Wilson asked.
Taylor looked at Wilson but made no effort to speak.
“Let’s get right to it,” started an impatient Director Miller. He pointed his pen at W
ilson and said, “Do have anything you’d like to say in your defense before we get started?”
Wilson felt his throat tighten while he chided himself for not coming to see Miller the second he landed. It was a mistake to cede the discussion to Hargrave. It was obvious by the pissed-off look on Miller’s face that the well had been poisoned. With his options limited he started with the avenue that seemed most natural.
“Director, I have no idea what EAD Hargrave has been telling you, but I can assure you that there is another side to this extremely complicated and important investigation and I have some very good reasons for not keeping EAD Hargrave up to speed on every aspect of it.” Wilson leaned back and took a deep breath, hoping Miller would slow things down and at least be open-minded.
Miller did not pause. He instead forcefully stated how things were to proceed. In light of the fact that he was a former federal judge, that shouldn’t have been surprising. “I don’t want to hear innuendo, I don’t want to hear rumors. Do we understand each other?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Miller looked at his watch and said, “Start.”
“Sir, with all due respect, I think EAD Hargrave is not in the best position to judge me and the actions of my team.”
Taylor, with his stiff back brace, held up a hand and didn’t bother to try to look at anyone, as his neck couldn’t move. “We are not here to discuss the men and women on your team. This is solely about you and your behavior.”
“Fine,” Wilson said, trying to sound reasonable. “EAD Hargrave is not in the best position to judge me.”
“And why is that?” Director Miller asked.
“Because of his extremely close relationship with Director Kennedy.”
Miller’s face twisted into a look of disapproval while he leaned forward and tapped the screen of an iPad several times.
Wilson heard his voice emanate from the overhead speakers. Oh, I’m reading you loud and clear. Are you still recording our conversation? Because I want to make sure you get this part. I didn’t tell you any of this because I can’t trust you. Because the entire Counterintelligence Division knows that you’re too close to Director Kennedy, and based on what I’ve experienced the last few days I’m inclined to believe those rumors. So you better get ready for your own board of inquiry.