by Vince Flynn
Gould left the car lot and found a big auto center a few miles down the road. He dropped another twelve hundred bucks on new tires, belts, filters, an oil change, and a new battery. The car salesman had told him everything was in great shape, but Gould knew better than to trust him. With so much on the line it wasn’t worth leaving the dependability of the vehicle to chance. The next stop was Home Depot, where he picked up an extension ladder, a chain and lock, a set of tools, an extension cord, two high-pressure hoses, five different types of tape, a roll of clear plastic, a utility knife, six five-gallon gas cans, two forty-gallon propane tanks, and a few other odds and ends. The final stop for the night was Radio Shack where he purchased a remote switch. Gould went back to the hotel, locked everything up in the truck, and chained the ladder to the truck bed.
He then went about briefing Claudia on the plan. Any anger he felt toward her over what had happened earlier that day was now mitigated by the news that Mitch Rapp would be going under the knife in the morning. Since Gould had first learned about the knee problem that morning things had only gotten better. Rapp’s wife unwittingly gave Gould a constant stream of updates as she called friends and family and told them in detail that Rapp was going in for arthroscopic knee surgery in the morning. She had given away the entire timetable. When they were supposed to be at the hospital, and what time she expected to get back to the house. Gould had at minimum a seven-hour window to get things ready.
In almost all matters tactical, Claudia deferred to Louie. In this instance she made only one request—that he avoid killing the woman. She was not part of the contract. Gould had expected this, and it was one of the reasons that he had withheld from Claudia the fact that Rapp’s wife was pregnant. He would make an effort to keep the woman out of it, but he would not let it compromise the mission. Rather than argue with her, though, he promised her that Rapp’s wife would be fine.
Gould took the opportunity to lay down the law to Claudia. He didn’t want her leaving the hotel until her new morning ritual was over. He couldn’t have her out in public drawing attention to herself by throwing up every thirty minutes. Claudia agreed. She would stay back at the hotel and monitor the position of Anna’s car and any new audio they might pick up. With the plan solidified they packed everything up. Gould would be leaving the hotel in the pickup truck before sunrise and Claudia would check out around noon as long as Anna’s car stayed put at the hospital.
At 6:00 a.m. Gould left the hotel, and stopped at a gas station midway between the hotel and Rapp’s house. He was wearing a pair of Carhartt blue jeans, brown work boots, a blue and gray flannel shirt, and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. He hadn’t shaved in three days, and was already well on his way to having a full beard. Gould topped off the truck’s tank and then filled all six gas cans. He grabbed a newspaper, paid for everything in cash, and left. At a separate gas station a few blocks away, he pulled in and had them fill the forty-pound propane tanks.
He’d picked out his spot the night before and pulled into the strip mall parking lot at exactly 6:22 in the morning. He checked the tracking device and noted that Rielly’s car had not moved. He looked east and then west down the highway and wondered for the twentieth time what the odds were that they would take Rapp’s car instead of hers. There wasn’t much he could do at this point other than wait and see. Gould turned off the truck, went into the Starbucks and grabbed a black coffee. He came back out a few minutes later and settled in for what he hoped would be a short wait. He started reading the paper and tried to take his mind off what lay ahead. At 6:31 the device beeped, telling him that her car was moving. Gould breathed a sigh of relief. This was going to be much easier if they knew exactly where Rapp and his wife were.
Six minutes later, the blue BMW Series Five came flying past Gould. Rapp was in the passenger seat and his wife was driving. Gould watched with professional detachment. Rather than leave right away, he stayed put. Getting to the house too early might raise some suspicion, so he drank his coffee, read the paper, and kept on eye on the tracking device. At five minutes before seven Rielly’s car stopped near George Washington University Hospital. Gould waited another fifteen minutes and then finished the last of the coffee. He backed out of the spot and headed for Rapp’s house. A mile down the road he dialed Claudia’s mobile phone. She answered on the fourth ring.
“Allô.”
Gould nearly bit his own tongue in an effort to stop himself from screaming at her for answering in French.
“How are you feeling?” he asked in a tense voice.
“Not good,” she answered.
“Go back to sleep. I just wanted to tell you that everything looks good. I’m headed over. I’ll call at ten to give you an update.”
“Okay.”
Gould ended the call and gripped the wheel tightly with both hands. Claudia was not herself. The sooner he got this over with the better. Gould considered how much of it was due to her being pregnant and how much of it was due to burnout. He’d noticed the first sign four months ago. She’d gotten drunk after an operation they’d run in Ukraine and asked him if he thought she would go to hell. A self-professed atheist, he told her there was no such thing as hell. She shook her head and told him he was wrong, and then she began to sob uncontrollably.
Gould looked back on it now and saw it all very clearly. Getting pregnant was her way out, and it was her hold on him. He had little doubt she had stopped taking the Pill. She wanted an excuse to walk away, and better yet, one that would make him walk away with her. Gould shared none of her guilt over what they had done, but he understood it. This one last job was all he wanted. Seven more hours tops was all he needed. Rapp was being handed to him on a silver platter. He’d be disoriented from surgery, his instincts and skills greatly diminished. He could never again hope to have such a chance. Six million dollars if he did it right. A total of eleven million dollars to kill one man. He must have really pissed someone off to get a price tag like that on his head. Gould smiled at the prospect of so much money. They would have true independence. Live wherever they wanted and do so lavishly. A few more hours, he told himself. Keep it together and stay focused.
When he reached the road that Rapp lived on, he put on his Oakley sunglasses and slowed down like he was looking for an address. From the county road turnoff it was 2.4 miles to Rapp’s house. Gould passed an older couple walking their dogs, but that was it. He hoped it stayed this quiet all morning. He continued past Rapp’s house to where the road dead-ended and then turned around and came back. Everything looked good. Rapp’s car wasn’t in the driveway so Gould assumed it was in the one-car garage.
He backed the pickup down the long driveway and came to a stop ten feet short of the garage. Gould hopped out and was putting on a pair of work gloves when a dog came bounding around the corner. For a split second he froze. The dog let out a bark, but it was not the kind of bark Gould was so familiar with, the type a dog gives right before it lunges for your throat. This was more playful. Gould took off one of his work gloves and squatted down. He held his hand out, palm up, and the dog approached tentatively. Once it got a good sniff of him the animal relaxed and Gould scratched its neck.
“Not much of a guard dog, are you?”
The dog, a collie mix of some sort, just wagged its tail and looked at Gould with its big brown eyes. Gould glanced around and wondered if the dog belonged to one of the neighbors. He couldn’t imagine anything this docile was owned by Rapp. There was at least two hundred feet between houses on either side and there was a stand of trees and shrubs that delineated the property line. While the leaves had started to change color, none had yet fallen. Gould checked the dog’s neck for a collar. It wasn’t wearing one. The important thing is to keep acting normal, he told himself. If a neighbor came up he was here to do an estimate for new gutters.
Gould stood and unlocked the extension ladder. He lifted it out of the bed and carried it around to the side of the house where he set it on the ground. Six paces from the garage sto
od a big silver metallic propane tank. It was partially concealed on three sides by pyramidal arborvitae. Gould walked over and read the gauge. It was just over two thirds full. He nodded to himself and got to work. After standing the ladder up against the side of the house he went back to the truck and grabbed the roll of plastic, the knife, and tape. As he climbed onto the roof, the dog sat at the base of the ladder and watched him. Fortunately the fireplace and the two vents were all situated on the water side of the gable. Anyone driving down the road wouldn’t see him on the roof except when he was working on the chimney. That’s where Gould started. He tore off four long strips of duct tape and stuck them to the waist of his jeans. Next he cut out a large section of plastic and laid it over the top of the chimney. After all four sides were secured, he ran a strip of tape around the entire thing to make sure it was sealed. The vents took only a minute or two apiece.
Once off the roof he walked around to the back of the house. He stopped on the back deck for a moment and looked out at the bay. There were a couple of smaller boats not far from shore. He thought they were probably fishermen. Gould leaned over the railing. It was almost a straight drop down to the water. There were two boats tied up: a ski boat and a fishing boat with a deep v-hull. He walked up to the glass French doors and looked inside at the kitchen area. Going inside was a nonstarter. A guy like Rapp would have the place wired with every type of security device known.
Gould completed the circle of the house and ended up where he started. The air-conditioning unit was located between the propane tank and the house. Right next to where the cooling hose entered the house was the fresh air vent for the heating and cooling system. It was a six-by-six-inch galvanized cover that angled out from the house so that there was a three-by-six-inch opening at the bottom. Gould got down on one knee and with a needle-nose pliers removed the screen from the inside of the vent. He went back to the truck and got the extension cord and the remote receiving unit he’d picked up at Radio Shack. He plugged the remote receiving unit into an outdoor outlet, checked to make sure it was in the off position, and then walked to the end of the driveway. The dog followed him. He pointed the handheld remote at the garage, pressed the button once, and walked back. Gould was satisfied to see the remote receiving unit was now in the on position. He flipped it back to the off position and grabbed the extension cord.
The French Foreign Legion had taught him a lot of things, and one of them was how to make improvised explosive devices. Gould cut off the female end of the extension cord and stripped away the insulation. He twisted the two exposed wires together and then fed the cord into the fresh air vent on the side of the house. He figured eight feet was enough and plugged the male end into the remote receiving unit. Now things got a little tricky. Gould uncoiled the two high-pressure hoses, fed them into the vent with the extension cord, and then taped off the opening with plastic. There was only one thing left to do. He took the two forty-pound propane tanks from the truck, hooked them up to the high-pressure hoses, and opened the valves.
The dog came up and dropped a dirty tennis ball at his feet. Gould picked it up and threw it toward the road. The dog came roaring back and Gould gave the ball another good chuck. He checked his watch. It was ten after eight. He figured it would take about five more minutes to empty the tanks. Between throws of the tennis ball, he grabbed all but two of the gas cans and carried them over to the side of the house. Gould dropped down to one knee and listened to see if the propane was drained from the tanks. The hissing noise was gone, so he closed the valves and carefully extracted the high-pressure hoses from the side of the house. Gould quickly sealed the plastic with more duct tape, and then lined up the rectangular gas cans between the house and the large propane tank.
With a rubber-handled crescent wrench, he crawled under the big metallic tank and began to slowly loosen the gas line that ran from the bottom of the tank, underground, and into the house. With every half turn he’d stop and listen. He didn’t want the connection too loose or the neighbors might smell it and call in a gas leak, or possibly Rapp and his wife. He wiggled the line a bit and gave it one more quarter turn. A soft hissing noise came from the connection and Gould caught a slight whiff of liquid propane. He remained there for a few minutes to see if it remained constant. It did, so he crawled out from under the tank and unscrewed the caps on each of the gas cans.
If all went according to plan, the gas cans would be knocked over by the initial explosion. The cascading fuel would reach the underside of the large tank almost immediately. The fireball from the house would ignite the gas which in turn would mix with the slow leak from the large tank. The secondary explosion would obliterate the extension cord, the remote receiving unit, the gas cans, and probably the entire house. With no evidence left, all fingers would be pointed at the Chesapeake Bay Propane Company.
38
R app came out of his drug-induced sleep feeling groggy and disoriented. After a moment he realized he was in a hospital room. He looked down the length of his body at his knee. His leg was there, but he couldn’t feel anything. It was propped up in the air and covered with a blanket. Her touch was so gentle he didn’t even notice at first that she was holding his hand. He slowly turned his head and looked into his wife’s beautiful green eyes. Rapp blinked several times and looked around the room. The shades were drawn. He had no idea how long he’d been out. When he looked back at Anna, she smiled her perfect smile and asked him how he felt.
“Thirsty,” he answered in a hoarse voice.
She raised the bed up a few degrees and gave him some water through a straw. “The doctor says you did great.”
Rapp looked around the room again. “What time is it?”
“A little before eleven.”
“In the morning?”
“Yes.”
Rapp rubbed his eyes. “When can we get the hell out of here?”
She smiled. “I told them you wouldn’t want to wait around.”
“Can you open the shades?”
Rielly got up and pulled back the heavy gray plastic curtains.
Rapp squinted. He had the twisted look on his face that belongs to an extremely hungover man who is forced to endure the bright midday light without sunglasses. Anna knew there was no way they could keep him in bed for two more hours so she left to find his doctor. They came back a few minutes later and the doctor pulled back the sheet covering Rapp’s legs. He carefully unwound the Ace bandage and removed the ice pack. Rapp looked at his knee. It was yellow from the betadine they’d used to sanitize it for surgery. Rapp was surprised that it wasn’t more swollen and said so. The doctor explained that the surgery had gone very well. He’d cleaned out the cartilage and removed two bone spurs that were the likely cause of most of the discomfort.
“Can you feel anything, yet?” the doctor asked.
Rapp wondered which answer would get him home quicker. “A little bit.”
“Does it hurt?”
Rapp shrugged.
The doctor nodded. “Since you’ve been running around on this thing for as long as you have, my guess is you have a pretty high tolerance for pain. Your wife said you’d like to get home as soon as possible.”
“Yeah.”
“How do you feel?” the doctor asked.
“Fine,” Rapp lied. He had a splitting headache and was slightly nauseated.
“Your wife says you don’t want to take anything stronger than Tylenol Three.”
Rapp nodded.
“Good, but if you change your mind, call and we’ll get you something better.”
“The Tylenol will be fine.”
“I’ll get the nurse to give you a five-day supply. You’re in great shape, so I think you’re going to recover quickly.”
Rapp sat up a little more. “When can I start running again?”
“I’d like to see you give it up altogether, but since I know that isn’t going to happen, you should wait at least a month.”
“A month?” Rapp asked, obviously not hap
py with the answer.
The truth was two weeks, but the doctor dealt with guys like this all the time. No matter what he told them, they’d divide by two. “You can do some light biking in four days, and you can try swimming as long as it doesn’t hurt, but I really want you to lay off the running for at least four weeks. The first step though is to stay off it for the next forty-eight hours and you have to ice it every other hour.” He looked at Anna. “When he goes to bed tonight, elevate the knee with a couple of pillows and put ice on it. Try to get up at least once and change the ice pack. Above all, though, make sure he stays off it and he keeps it elevated.”
“When can I leave?” asked Rapp again.
“I’ll get the paperwork started, and we’ll get you out of here in no time.”
Rapp’s idea of no time was fifteen minutes. The doctor’s was an hour, so it was 12:07 by the time they wheeled him out the front door. He was dressed in a pair of workout shorts and a blue Syracuse T-shirt. His knee was bandaged and he noticed for the first time someone had placed a powder blue booty on his left foot. Anna had the car pulled up to the curb and was standing by the open passenger door. Before the orderly could help, Rapp pushed himself out of the chair and put one hand on the open door and the other on the car’s roof. He hopped into position and lowered himself into the seat. Anna helped him with the seatbelt and closed the door.
She got behind the wheel and pulled away from the hospital. “You must be starving.”
Rapp dug through the glove box and found an old pair of sunglasses he kept in her car. Even though it was a slightly overcast day, the light was really bugging him. “Not really,” he answered. “It must be the drugs.”
“Straight home then?”
“Yeah.”