by Vince Flynn
Rielly could barely believe she was even in this meeting let alone receiving such an offer from the president. She told herself to play it cool and asked, “What types of things will you want to censor from my story?”
Hayes looked to the four on the couch. Kennedy spoke first. “If you leave out Mr. Kruse and any direct involvement by the CIA, we’re fine.”
“Am I all right if I say you were involved in intelligence gathering and planning?”
“As long as you stay vague, we won’t have a problem.”
Rielly raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Define ‘vague.’”
Hayes stepped forward and waved his hands in the air. “Hold on. I have a better idea. Ms. Rielly, how would you like to get the scoop on a huge part of this story?” Hayes looked her in the eye. “At noon FBI Director Roach is going to hold a press conference, and the cat will be out of the bag. I can give you that story right now, and you can head out to NBC and break it to the world. You will scoop everybody.”
Rielly was interested. Very interested. This could turn out to be a nice arrangement. She nodded and said, “I’ll play ball.”
“Good. Here’s the deal. The FBI has searched the White House, and they can’t find one of the terrorists. We have reports that last night after the explosion someone from the FBI carried a wounded woman out of the Treasury tunnel. That woman turned out to be my secretary. She was found in a ditch in rural Maryland at six this morning, barely conscious. She was last seen with Aziz right before the explosions took place outside of my bunker.” The president paused, giving Rielly a second to pull it together. “Oh, and one other thing. There were no FBI agents in the building when the bombs went off.”
Rielly’s eyes got big. “So you’re saying Aziz escaped.”
“It looks that way.”
Rielly looked to Rapp, who reluctantly nodded. After shaking her head, she said, “Wow.”
Hayes walked over and placed his hand on her shoulder. “I’m serious about our arrangement.” The president turned her toward the door and started walking with her. “You’ve earned this, Anna. Thank you for everything you’ve done.”
Rielly didn’t know what to say. She didn’t feel as if she had done all that much. “Thank you, sir.”
“No—thank you.” Smiling, Hayes squeezed both of her shoulders. “I almost forgot. I have one other thing for you. Director Tracy of the Secret Service is expecting a call from you. It appears he has some information on Dallas King that you might find interesting. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we need to discuss certain things involving Mr. Aziz. Stop by next week, and we’ll talk more.” Hayes turned Rielly toward the door and opened it for her.
Rapp sat watching the exchange, and as Rielly left the room, he felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. He wanted to talk to her. With a frown Rapp looked back across the room.
President Hayes came walking back toward the fireplace saying, “I don’t care who we have to bribe, who we have to threaten—I want Aziz’s head on a silver platter. I want him taken out, and I want us to seriously explore our options for dealing with Saddam Hussein.”
Hayes turned to Rapp. “I can’t thank you enough; this country can’t thank you enough.” The president shook his head. “It’s a shame they’ll never know the contributions and sacrifices you’ve made.”
Rapp grinned. “That’s all right, sir. I didn’t exactly get into this line of work for accolades and recognition.”
“I know you didn’t, but I just wish there was a better way to repay you and properly show our gratitude.”
“Just let me be the one to punch Aziz’s ticket, and that’ll be payment enough.”
“I plan on it. Which brings me to my next point.” Hayes looked away from Rapp for a second and focused on the others. “I want every intelligence asset we can spare focusing on tracking down Aziz. Call in every marker we have. As I said a second ago, we are not going to play by the rules on this one. I want him caught.” Hayes turned back to Rapp. “I want you to go home, and I want you to get some rest.” The president began to walk Rapp toward the door. “If we find him, I want you fresh.”
“Yes, sir.” Rapp shook the president’s hand and left the room. He walked out onto the front stoop of Blair House. Bringing his hand up over his eyes, he shielded them from the light and searched the crowd. Nothing. He turned to his right and left but came up empty again.
“Can I help you find something, Mr. Kruse?”
Rapp looked down. Directly in front of him, leaning against the president’s limo, was the beautiful Anna Rielly.
Rapp walked down the steps and said, “I thought you’d be hustling off to your station to break the story.”
Rielly pushed herself away from the limo. With a grin she said, “I have some time.” Reaching her hand out, she added, “Besides, I wanted to say good-bye.” She grabbed Rapp’s hand and squeezed it tight. Pointing down the street, she said, “Why don’t you walk me down to the corner so I can catch a cab.”
“Sure.” The two of them started walking toward Seventeenth Street hand in hand.
Rielly leaned away from him and asked, “So, are you ever going to tell me your real name?”
“Maybe.” Rapp took a couple more steps and smiled. “Someday after you earn my trust.”
They walked in silence for a while, and then Rielly asked, “So about this life story of yours, when am I going to get a chance to hear it?”
“Whenever you want.”
“I’d imagine you’re going to be pretty busy for a while.”
“Who knows.” They reached the corner and stopped. “I’m thinking of taking some time off.”
“Really?”
“Why do you sound so surprised?”
Rielly studied him for a second. “You don’t seem like the type of person-that takes time off.”
Rapp shrugged his shoulders. “You’d be surprised.”
“I think there are probably a lot of things about you that might surprise me.”
Rapp shook his head. “I doubt it. I’m pretty boring when it comes down to it.”
Rielly looked down at their hands and rubbed her thumb along his finger. Peeking up at him, she said, “We need to set our dinner date.”
Her thumb rubbing up and down on his finger made his heart race. “Any time you can fit me into your schedule.”
“How about sometime next week.”
“I was thinking about something a little earlier.”
Rielly looked up with her green eyes, a soft smile spreading across her face. Rapp reached down and grabbed her chin. Pulling his mouth to hers, he kissed her and said, “How about tonight?”
Epilogue
THE OLD MAN shuffled down the busy street. It was almost midnight, and the crowds were thinning. He picked his way through the people, his posture hunched, his eyes scanning their faces. He wore a pair of dirty, cracked tennis shoes, and his jeans were several inches too short. Matted clumps of dirty gray and black hair adorned his head and a film of dirt covered every inch of exposed skin. In some cities he might have stood out, but not in Sao Paulo, Brazil. With over twenty million people, five million of whom lived in utter poverty, he was just another lost soul.
He stepped past a fellow homeless person who had curled up in a storefront doorway for the night. He was in Bom Retiro, the ethnic enclave of the massive city that was home to almost a million Palestinian, Lebanese, Iranian, and Arab immigrants. His arrival in this city, of all the cities in the world, was a feat in and of itself. It had been prompted by one small piece of information.
Muttering in semiconscious delirium, Fara Harut had unwittingly given them their clue. Within minutes, a massive electronic gathering operation by the National Security Agency was under way. A KH-12 Keyhole Satellite was moved into geosynchronous orbit over the city of Sao Paulo and began recording phone conversations from the Bom Retiro neighborhood. The NSA’s supercomputers at Fort Mead, Maryland, sifted through the thousands of calls and kicked out the ones that matched preassig
ned profiles for content, tone, and voice signature. It had taken three weeks and a day, but the analysts finally found what they were looking for.
The old man continued weaving his way through the crowd, his dirty canvas bag draped over his shoulder. He marked the faces of the people he had seen on his previous visits. He looked at their eyes and checked their waists for the telltale bulge of a weapon. That was how he had found this street the night before last. It started with one man standing in a doorway smoking a cigarette. He had shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and when his unzipped leather jacket opened, it revealed the black steel of a pistol.
Rafique Aziz was near. Rapp could feel it. When he passed the man standing guard in the doorway, he kept his head down and looked the man over closely. A few steps later, Rapp stopped and bent over to pick up a bottle cap he had dropped on a previous pass. When he stood, he looked through the small crack at the bottom of the window shade and spied two men sitting on a couch watching TV. Twenty minutes earlier, Rapp had watched a sedan pull up in front of the row house and deposit a prostitute.
Rapp continued down the street and turned into the alley. He pulled the top off a garbage can and pretended to go through it. Fifty feet away in the darkness of the alley, the hot red tip of a cigarette glowed. Rapp had been adamant about one thing: he would go in alone. No contact with the Brazilian authorities, no electronic-surveillance vans, and no hit squads. Nothing to spook Aziz into running. Commander Harris and twelve of his SEALs were on station—waiting in two sedans a mile to the east and two more to the west. Rapp had convinced his bosses and the president to give him a week. It had taken just three days for his trained eyes to discover what all the expensive surveillance equipment in the CIA’s arsenal would have missed. The simple bulge on a man’s hip.
With each passing garbage can, the alley grew darker and the rats more plentiful. Rapp threw a bottle in his canvas bag and looked up at the second story of the house. The shade glowed a soft yellow as a candle flickered behind it. A figure briefly moved in front of the shade. Rapp licked away the dryness on his lips and felt his heart quicken as he neared the back door.
The bodyguard was only twenty feet away, and Rapp could feel the man watching him. Glancing to the side, he looked for the guard’s hands. One was resting on his right hip and the other on the butt end of the cigarette. Rapp stepped carefully. He was close now, just under ten feet away. He heard the guard’s pistol slide out of its holster and kept about his business. The guard spoke to him in Arabic, telling him to move on. Rapp looked up and acted as if he didn’t understand the man. His hand was still in the worn canvas bag, a firm grasp on the familiar grip of his silenced Beretta 9-mm pistol.
Rapp looked at the barrel of the guard’s pistol. It was pointed at the far end of the alley. Wrong move, Rapp thought to himself, as he squeezed the trigger of the Beretta. A single bullet spat from the end of the gun and hit the guard between his thick black eyebrows.
Rapp rushed the next three steps, grabbed onto the falling man, and eased him to the ground. From his bag, he pulled out a small radio and said, “I’m entering the house.” Leaving the bag next to the body, he slowly stepped into the kitchen. There was laughter from down the hall and voices could be heard from the TV. Rapp closed the door behind him and crossed the kitchen. Straight ahead and down the hall was the front door. To his left, the stairs that led to the second floor, and to his right the two men watching TV with their back to him.
Every second counted. Rapp stepped into the room and leveled his Beretta. The man on the left sensed something and spun around. Rapp immediately connected the face with a name. It was Salim Rusan, the man who had stood on the roof of the Washington Hotel a month earlier and killed a dozen Secret Service officers. Rapp put a bullet in the back of the second man’s head, then hit a surprised Rusan between the eyes. The silencer barely made a noise. Rapp stepped to the dead man on the right and took the remote control from his hand. After turning up the volume on the TV, he started for the stairs. Into his radio, he whispered, “Three Tangos down. Proceeding to second floor.” He checked the stairs quickly and then started up them two at a time. Stopping just short of the top, he listened. From the door straight ahead and to the left came the passionate purrs of a young woman moaning. Rapp took a deep breath; it had come down to this. He grabbed the doorknob with his right hand and pushed.
Rapp rushed the room, his gun sweeping from left to right. To the right was motion. Two bodies intertwined, lying flat. An arm extended above both heads, reaching for something. Rapp took aim and fired. The bullet slammed into Aziz’s elbow, shattering the joint.
Rapp did not hesitate. He moved his gun in an effort to find a more vital target. The woman was in the way, and Aziz was rolling to use her as a shield. Rapp found Aziz’s hip, fired his weapon, and started to close. The second arm was now reaching for the pillow. Rapp hit him in the other elbow. Blood geysered from the fresh wound, and Aziz let out a low, guttural moan.
Rapp yanked the woman off the bed. He took off his wig and spat out his fake teeth. He looked down at Aziz, lying on the bed and bleeding in three places, his arms useless. With the silencer pointed at Aziz’s forehead, Rapp asked, “Do you remember me?”
Aziz looked up in pain, no recognition on his face.
Rapp turned his head to the side. “You cut me in Paris, remember?”
Aziz’s face froze as he searched his memory. After a moment a thin smile creased his lips.
Rapp backed up a step. With great satisfaction he squeezed the trigger one more time, closing a very bad chapter in his life.
“Four Tangos down. I’m on my way out,” Rapp muttered into his radio. He herded the prostitute down the hall and to the first floor. At the back door he told her to get lost and watched her stumble into the darkness. Rapp reached into his bag and grabbed a block of C-4 plastique, setting the timer for twenty seconds. He threw it into the kitchen and closed the door.
Rapp walked casually to the end of the alley, where a four-door Mercedes sedan skidded to a halt. The back door flew open, and Rapp got in next to Commander Harris.
As the driver hit the gas, there was a loud explosion and the dark alley erupted into a fiery ball.
About the Author
VINCE FLYNN is a graduate of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. His previous book, Term Limits, is currently available in paperback from Pocket Books. He lives in the Twin Cities, where he is working on a series of political thrillers.