by Vince Flynn
In unison her end of the table turned to see how the idea would be received by the other end, which was anchored by the representatives from the Joint Chiefs, the CIA, and the FBI. Admiral Nelson, the chief of naval operations, was the first to speak.
With his bald head and gaunt face, Nelson said, “I would advise against giving them anything! It will set a horrible precedent! Our policy on terrorism has always been zero tolerance and no negotiation. Zero!” Nelson brought his hand up and formed the number with his thumb and fingers. “The entire world is watching. . . . Now is not the time to reverse our course.”
Vice President Baxter looked at his military advisers. He had known this would be their position, but now he needed them on board. He needed to build some consensus. That way if everything blew up, he wouldn’t be the only one holding the bag. Baxter decided to play up the compassion factor. “Let me remind everyone that we have hostages in there. American citizens. Yes, the president is safe, but we still have to do our best to get our people out of there alive. These are troops we left behind, and if we have to pay a little money . . . that isn’t even ours”—Baxter looked around the room nodding his head—“to get some of them out . . . then that is what we are going to do.” The vice president focused his attention on the opposite end of the table, looking each of the military officers in the eye, one at a time. He would call them later individually to shore up support where it was needed.
After finishing his Dale Carnegie personal-eye-contact maneuver, the vice president moved on to his conclusion. “In light of the recent news, this is what we are going to do.” Baxter pointed at Director Roach of the FBI. “I want you and your people to take charge of the entire area surrounding the White House. If you need to use any of the Secret Service’s people in an advisory role, feel free to do so.”
Director Roach leaned forward. “I assume you would like us to draw up plans for rescuing the hostages?”
“Of course, but no action is to be taken unless I say so. If we have to go in, I want to have secured the release of as many hostages as possible beforehand.”
Baxter then turned to Attorney General Tutwiler and said, “Marge, please fill us in on how things will proceed tomorrow.”
Tutwiler inclined her head forward so she could see all the way down the table. “At nine tomorrow we will call Mr. Aziz and inform him that we are prepared to transfer part of the money into his accounts. This will be fairly easy to do. Secretary Rose tells me the money is in a dozen separate banks, so we will simply transfer the proper amount of money from one of the banks to Iran. The sum will be around a billion dollars. We will tell him we are working on getting the rest of the money, but it would help if, in a sign of good faith, he would release some of the hostages.” Tutwiler paused for a moment, distracted by a man halfway down the table who was shaking his head vigorously.
Tutwiler started speaking again but kept her eyes on the man. “I have done quite a bit of research on hostage negotiations and have found that in these situations if you can get the captors to acquiesce to even the smallest request, you have significantly increased your chances for freeing the hostages.” Tutwiler stopped speaking as she watched the man shake his head one last time and then drop his face into his hands. The attorney general was not the only one who noticed.
Rapp couldn’t take it anymore. Every time Tutwiler uttered a word, he felt as if someone were driving a nail further and further into his temple. As Rapp buried his face in his hands, he said to himself, This can’t be happening. Please tell me this isn’t happening. I have put in all of this work, and I’m so close. Rapp squeezed his head in his hands and thought to himself, This woman has no idea what the fuck she is talking about.
At least half of the people at the table were looking back and forth between Marge Tutwiler and the unknown dark-haired man who seemed to be in danger of suffering an aneurysm before their very eyes. That the others were watching also did not go unnoticed by the attorney general. Tutwiler cleared her throat loudly and asked, “Excuse me, is everything all right?”
Rapp didn’t hear her at first, and then he felt Irene Kennedy touch his arm. Slowly, Rapp let his hands fall from his face and looked up, to find the attention of everyone at the table on him. When Tutwiler repeated her question, Rapp looked at her and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
In an extremely impatient tone, the attorney general asked, “Is there something you would like to add, or should we get you some aspirin for your . . . headache?”
Rapp turned briefly to his bosses, who gave him no signal one way or another, and then directed his attention back to the attorney general. As he registered the condescending expression on her face, something told him now was not the time to be meek. This was it. For the first time in this shitty journey, he knew where Rafique Aziz was and where he would be for the immediate future. Cover or no cover, there was a good chance this was going to be the last battle, and there was no sense in going home with a lot of unused ammo.
Rapp straightened himself and said, “I would most definitely like to add something. . . . Actually I would like to add a lot.” He paused briefly and then said, “First of all, if you only give him part of the money and ask him to release some of the hostages, he will blow his screwy lid. He will take one or more of the hostages right to the window, so all of the cameras can watch, and he will kill them. He will blow their heads off on national TV.”
Tutwiler threw her head back and, with a disapproving look, said, “Is that right, Mr. . . .”
“Mr. Kruse.”
“And what exactly is your expertise in regards to negotiating with terrorists, Mr. Kruse?”
Rapp found the question so ridiculous, he shook his head and laughingly replied, “None.”
Tutwiler, not used to being treated in such a manner, turned to Baxter-and said in a loud enough voice for half of the room to hear, “What is this man doing here?”
Her arrogant question drove Rapp up and out of his chair with Irene Kennedy’s hand gripping at his forearm. Rapp pried his boss’s fingers loose, saying firmly, “I’ve put way too much into this.”
Rapp began walking toward the podium. His suit, white shirt, and tie did a decent job of helping him blend in, but to anyone who cared to notice, it wasn’t hard to figure out he was more than an analyst. When Rapp reached the podium, he repeated Tutwiler’s question to the group. “What is this man doing here?” Rapp stared up at the ceiling as if mulling the question over. “You know, I’ve asked myself that question a lot of times over the last decade, and I’m afraid I can’t answer it for you.” Rapp turned back toward Tutwiler, a look of feigned wonderment on his face. “But I can answer your other question . . . the one about negotiating with terrorists.” Rapp paused and then said casually, “I don’t negotiate with terrorists, Ms. Tutwiler. I kill them.” Grabbing the podium, Rapp looked down the length of the table and said, “I hunt them down, and I kill them.”
Tutwiler sat up a little straighter, attempting to appear unfazed by the unusual admission. Trying to gain some composure, she asked the first question that came to mind. “Who do you work for, Mr. Kruse?”
“I’m afraid that’s on a need-to-know basis, ma’am.” With his smart-ass grin, Rapp gave the standard spycraft reply, “And you don’t need to know.”
“Well, Mr. Kruse, if we decide it’s time to kill these terrorists,” said Tutwiler, repeating his words in a mocking tone, “we will make sure we give you a call. Until then, we would all appreciate it if you would take a seat so we can get on with the business at hand.”
Tutwiler’s smugness was really starting to irk Rapp, and his temper was dangerously close to reaching a level that he couldn’t control. He studied her for a second and then asked, “Ms. Tutwiler, have you ever been to Beirut?” Rapp waited a moment for her response and then said, “I didn’t think so. Just in case you were wondering, that’s where Rafique Aziz is from. How about Iran? Have you ever been there?” Rapp gave her less than a second to answer.
“I didn’t think so. I was in Iran last night,” Rapp added casually. “Actually, I spent most of the last week there. And since we don’t have an embassy in Iran, you can probably figure out that I wasn’t on official government business. Do you by chance speak Farsi or any Arabic dialects?” Rapp shook his head, answering the question for her. “I didn’t think so. How about the Muslim faith, the jihad? Are you up to speed on the customs of Rafique Aziz and his people?”
“What’s your point, Mr. Kruse?” asked a defiant Tutwiler.
Rapp looked down the long table at the smug attorney general and growled in a voice that was barely beneath a shout, “The point is, Ms. Tutwiler, you don’t have the slightest clue who you’re dealing with!” Rapp pointed at her with each word. “While you were running around on the talk-show circuit criticizing law enforcement officers, who have done more in one week to stop crime than you will do in your entire academic-theory-laden lifetime, I was crawling around in the gutter of every hellhole in the Middle East trying to find Rafique Aziz.” Rapp watched Tutwiler fold her arms tightly across her chest and roll her eyes.
The last gesture did it, and in a voice intended to shake up more than just the attorney general, he yelled, “Hey, lady, this isn’t a game! This isn’t about who has the most master’s degrees or the biggest job title. People have died, and before this thing is over, more people are going to die!” Rapp turned his face to the side, showing the pinkish mark that angled downward across his bronzed face. “Do you see this scar? Let me clue you in on a little secret. It isn’t a paper cut. It was given to me, in person, by none other than Rafique Aziz. So when I offer my opinion about a man who you have never met . . . who you know nothing about, you should sit up and listen.” Rapp tightly gripped both sides of the podium. “The man we are talking about here isn’t a bank robber, and he sure as hell isn’t some hack like David Koresh. He’s a religious zealot who also happens to be a very highly trained and intelligent killer. Your little plan for tomorrow might stand a chance if we were dealing with some pissed-off employee who had taken over a bank or a post office, but this is the big leagues.” Rapp zeroed in on Tutwiler. “Aziz isn’t some two-bit criminal. When you jerk his chain tomorrow, by only giving him part of what he’s asked for, he’s going to take a bite out of your ass, and he’s going to bite hard.” Rapp leaned forward, elbows bent, poised over the podium, looking for even the smallest sign that he was getting through to the politicians at the other end of the room.
The expressions on their faces said it all. Everything he said was falling on deaf ears. The men and women at the opposite end of the table were looking at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. Rapp couldn’t believe it. Rafique Aziz was his cause. It had become his personal crusade; he’d devoted a full third of his life to hunting this one man. And that was only the start. It had grown to be much more than that as the death toll mounted. It had turned into a race to stop him from killing again. There was no one in this room, and probably no one in the world, who understood the mind of Rafique Aziz better than Rapp, and after all that he had given, how was he being repaid at the exact moment when they should be listening to him most? He was being regarded as if he were some crazed idiot.
Rapp bit down hard on his tongue and fought back the urge to scream at the top of his lungs. At that moment he realized he had one course of action. If the smug Marge Tutwiler wanted to put her little theories to work and these idiots wanted to follow her, then so be it. Tutwiler had given herself more than enough rope to hang herself with, and Rapp knew that as sure as the sun would rise tomorrow, she would be swinging from the gallows in the morning.
Rapp shook his head and said, “I’ve given you fair warning.” As he started for the exit, he yelled over his shoulder, “Call me after you’re done playing games, and I’ll come in and clean up your mess.” With that Rapp opened the door and disappeared into the hallway.
General Flood watched Rapp leave the room and then swiveled his chair away from the table, beckoning one of his aides over with a discreet wave of his forefinger. When the general had asked Director Stansfield to bring the young operative, he had not envisioned the scene that had just unfolded, but he was happy somebody had stepped up to the plate. An Air Force captain bent to the general’s ear and Flood whispered, “Please detain Mr. Kruse for me, and have him wait in my office until we’re finished.”
ALL OF THE hostages, with the exception of the Secret Service agents, had been moved to the White House mess. The tables and chairs that normally occupied the room had been thrown into the main hallway that led out onto West Executive Drive and now formed a tangled blockade. The hostages were seated on the floor, bunched in a tight circle like corralled cattle. Anywhere from one to four terrorists were watching over them at a time, and they came and went with no apparent pattern, often stopping to kick and scream at the hostages.
Anna Rielly was relieved as she sat back down on the blue carpet of the White House mess. She had made it to the bathroom and back without being hit or kicked. The woman in front of her had been slapped for daring to look up at one of the terrorists. Rielly had kept her eyes down with only one exception. One of the terrorists had followed her into the stall and to her complete humiliation had watched her go to the bathroom. Rielly was frightened by the expression on his face. He had stared at her intently while she relieved herself, and when she stood to pull her pants up, his eyes had followed her every move. The thought caused Rielly to clutch the neck of her blouse and shudder.
After the World Trade Center bombing Rielly had done a piece on Islamic terrorism for the NBC affiliate in Chicago. That two-week project had given her enough insight into the minds of radical Islamic fundamentalists to know that they were crazed in a way that was difficult even for the daughter of a Chicago cop to understand. In her captors’ minds women were objects to be owned or discarded, no different than a piece of livestock. Women who were not “of the faith” were deemed impure and evil, another way of saying, “fair game.”
What a first day on the job, she thought to herself. Rielly had wanted to be in the thick of real news, and now she was an actual part of one of the biggest stories in decades. She brushed a strand of her brown hair behind her ear, and with her head tilted toward the ground, she looked up toward one of the guards. The guard turned in her direction, and she quickly averted her eyes. Don’t make eye contact, she told herself. Look submissive and try to blend in.
Anna Rielly was blessed with a healthy sense of street smarts. Having grown up in the heart of Chicago, she had been exposed to the seedier side of life at an early age. Her mother, a social worker, and her father, a Chicago cop, made sure their five sons and only daughter understood that life was much different from what was shown on TV. All of this exposure had given the young woman a very strong survival instinct. Several years earlier in Chicago it had saved her life, and here in Washington she was hoping to repeat the performance.
Rielly had already removed all of her jewelry and as much of her makeup as possible. She knew that the less attention she attracted to herself the better. There had already been two men who had had their noses split wide open, and there was another woman who had been slapped so hard on the side of her head that her ear had started to bleed. Rielly kept repeating to herself, “Just keep a low profile, and you might make it out of here alive.”
Less could be said for Rielly’s new office partner, Stone Alexander, who was sitting at her side. He hadn’t wandered more than several feet from her since the onset of the attack. Not that he was protecting her—if anything, it was Rielly who was protecting him. Alexander leaned closer to her and asked, “How long are they going to make us sit here?”
Without moving her lips, Rielly whispered, “The only thing I know is, if one of these guys sees you talking, he’s going to come over here and crack his rifle over your surgically altered nose. . . . So for the last time, shut up.”
Alexander shrank away and dropped his head onto his folded hands. He had already cried
twice. Pathetic, Rielly thought to herself. Her father had always said people show their true colors in a crisis, and Alexander had shown his. It was yellow.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw someone new enter the room, and she glanced up at the man, careful to keep her head down. Rielly had not seen this one before. He looked different from the others. He was wearing the same green fatigues, but his hair was well styled and he lacked any facial hair. Rielly noted that the man was actually quite handsome.
That was when it hit her. It was the same man that Russ Piper had introduced her to. A Prince somebody or other. Oh, my God, Rielly thought. Where is Russ? With her head down Rielly scanned the mass of people, looking for her parents’ friend. Piper was nowhere in sight, and she could not remember seeing him since this morning.
Rielly scrutinized the man again. This man was the leader. It was obvious by how the others spoke to him and looked at him. When this supposed prince had entered the room, the other three terrorists had done everything short of snapping off salutes. The bald terrorist, who Rielly had originally thought was the leader, entered the room and approached the prince. He began whispering in the leader’s ear, and Rielly instantly noticed a change in the prince’s eyes.
RAFIQUE AZIZ STOOD with a demeanor that looked to be teetering between confidence and rage. As Muammar Bengazi whispered in his ear, the scales began to tilt in favor of rage. Aziz had known this moment would come. The fact that he had already played it out in his mind a hundred times would not take away from his performance.