by Vince Flynn
The Jansens’ flight wasn’t due until nine, so they had plenty of time to get things ready. Villaume came back out to the van with keys in hand and moved the vehicle down to the far end of the motel. The two men grabbed some of the equipment and moved it into the room. Cameron dropped his stuff on one of the beds and took a look around. The floor was covered with ugly seventies orange shag carpeting, the bedspreads were a shiny rust color and looked to be made of some highly flammable fabric, and wagon wheels served as headboards for the two twin beds. The room’s art consisted of a cheap print of Buffalo Bill and an ashtray shaped like a six-shooter.
Villaume popped one of the case’s clasps and said, “It ain’t the Ritz, but it’ll do.” After taking out a detailed map of the area, he unfolded it and stuck it to the wall with four thumb tacks. Next, he popped open two metallic briefcases and readied the equipment. Mario and Mary were to set up four directional parabolic microphones and a digital camera. Mary had also come up with the idea to set up a microwave tripwire. The Jansens, like most people in their line of work, had chosen their lair carefully. It was near the top of the mountain with only one home above it. Their house sat a good hundred yards off the main road. Mary Juarez was going to set up the invisible tripwire twenty yards in on the Jansens’ driveway. If anyone decided to make a visit, they’d know.
Villaume looked back at the map after the equipment was powered up. Pointing to it, he said, “They picked this town well. There’s only one road that comes in and out of this canyon. Only one road that leads up to their place. We might be able to use it against them, but if anything goes wrong, we’re trapped.”
Cameron stood back and studied the map, his arms folded across his chest and one hand scratching his beard. “I see your point. How far is it back to Interstate Seventy?”
“About eight miles.”
“And then how far to Denver?”
“Straight down the hill for about twenty minutes, and then we should be able to get lost in the city.”
“What about heading out of town to the south?”
Villaume looked at the map. “I think it’s even worse. We might be able to find some back road to turn off on and hide out for a while, but unless you can get a helicopter to come get us, we’re trapped.”
Frowning, Cameron surveyed the map for any other options. There were none. “We can’t afford getting tangled up with any cops. Thirty minutes on two roads.” Cameron shook his head. “They’ll have us on TV before we reach Denver.”
Villaume didn’t like where he thought Cameron might be going with this, so he stayed quiet. Cameron stared at the map for a while longer and then casually announced, “If we have any run-ins with the cops, we’ll have to dispose of them.”
“You mean kill them.” Villaume hated the way desk jockeys liked to come up with antiseptic terms like dispose and eliminate. Call a spade a spade.
Cameron shrugged. “I see no other choice.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” Villaume stared at Cameron. He was really beginning to question his judgment in letting this man come along. “You still haven’t told me what you want to do with the two targets. Are we going to kill them right away, or do you want to talk to them?”
Cameron hadn’t thought that one through yet. “I still haven’t decided. As you’ve repeatedly pointed out, it would be nice to avoid a scene. It would, in fact, be best if they just disappeared forever.”
“Can your person at the airport take them out if need be?”
“I gave him instructions to follow from a very discreet distance, and only as far as the exit to Evergreen.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Cameron stared back at him, not entirely enthralled with Villaume’s abruptness. “‘No’ is the answer to your question.”
“Well, if that’s the case, I would let them get settled into their house, listen to what they have to say, and then take them just before sunrise.”
Cameron nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”
Villaume grinned slightly. You are so full of shit, he thought to hiself. You’ve never had an original idea in your life.
Cameron saw the smirk on Villaume’s face, and he didn’t like it. The man needed to learn to respect his employers a little more. When this whole thing was over, he just might have to look into eliminating the Frog and his people. Duser would probably do it for half the normal fee. Duser hated the Frog as much as or more than Cameron did. The Professor grinned back at Villaume and decided a phone call to Duser would tie things up nicely.
AT THE COLORADO Springs airport, Scott Coleman, Kevin Hackett, and Dan Stroble were loading their gear into a rented silver Chevrolet Suburban. Hackett had made arrangements to leave the Learjet overnight and have the tanks topped off. As with the group that had landed two hours before them, everything was paid for with credit cards that did not bear their real names.
Hackett was the detail man and always had been. Back on SEAL Team Six, when Coleman needed to overcome a unique logistical problem, Hackett’s talents were usually called on. He had the patience and the ability to deal with the minutest of details, whereas Coleman was much more suited to deal with the big picture. It was a relationship that had served them very well over the years. There were times, however, when Hackett’s attention to detail bordered on whining.
With everything loaded up, the three former SEALs climbed into the Suburban and left the airport. It took about fifteen minutes to get through the Springs, and then they were on Interstate 25, driving with the rest of the traffic at eighty miles an hour. Stroble, who had spent a lot of time in the area, was driving the SUV. He had explained to the others that it was better to take the Interstate up to Denver and cut over than to take the winding Highway 67 through the foothills.
Hackett was in back pecking away at his four thousand dollar laptop. The computer had a tiny digital phone built in and could access the Internet without a hard line. One of his great assets was his computer skills. Hackett liked to say there was very little you couldn’t find over the Internet. Instead of having to stop at a convenience store to buy a map of the Evergreen area and risk getting caught on video, he could simply go on-line and find all the information they needed. Within five minutes, he had printed out eight pages of information on a tiny portable printer the size of a rolling pin.
Hackett handed the sheets to Coleman and went to work on his next project. As he pecked away at the keys, he asked for the third time since leaving Baltimore, “Why did Stansfield call on us instead of using someone within the Agency?”
Coleman lowered the sheets and stared out the front window of the truck. “You know the answer to that, Kevin.”
Stroble was hunched over the steering wheel, trying to get a good look at the sky. Weather in the mountains was a tricky thing. It could be seventy and sunny one minute and thirty and snowing the next. Glancing at the rearview mirror, he said, “If you’ve got a problem, state it, but you’re starting to get on my nerves, Kevin.”
This is how conversations went between Stroble and Hackett. Coleman barely noticed it anymore, he’d been around them for so long. They were like brothers. One minute, they could be throwing punches, and the next, they could be sharing a beer and laughing. They hadn’t swung at each other in a while, but they still got in some pretty heated arguments. The two had been best friends since entering Basic Underwater Demolition School with the SEALs twelve years earlier. They had been paired up as swim buddies during the grueling sixteen-week course that was designed to weed out all but the most devoted. Sleep deprivation, hazing, torturous runs on sandy beaches, and freezing midnight swims were all part of an elaborate testing process to find the toughest warriors. When the real shooting started, quitting wasn’t an option.
“What’s bothering me”—Hackett pushed his round glasses up on his nose—“is that I don’t think this is just some milk run. I think they were doing something outside official channels and it went wrong.”
“No shit, Sherl
ock,” Stroble replied. “The man wouldn’t have called on us otherwise.” Hackett could really be an old woman sometimes.
“What you’re missing is when things go wrong, they like to cover their tracks. Today we are the people who are sent to fix this problem; tomorrow we might be the problem.”
“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?” asked Stroble.
Hackett kept typing. “We don’t know what the Jansens were doing, but you can bet if it involved Iron Man, it was some serious shit. Some shit that didn’t go off the way they planned it. When that happens, our beloved Culinary Institute of America has a history of making people disappear.”
“You’re paranoid,” scoffed Stroble.
“That’s what you said that time in Libya.”
Libya was a bad memory that none of them liked to conjure up. Stroble clutched the steering wheel and mumbled, “You’re paranoid every time we run an op.”
Hackett hesitated and then replied in an icy tone, “That’s bullshit, and you know it.” It was all he had to say. The two men in the front seat were well aware of Hackett’s sixth sense.
Coleman turned sideways and looked at Hackett questioningly. He had seen a lot of weird stuff in the thirty-nine years he’d been alive. Most of it as a SEAL. Some of it he could explain, but much of it was beyond the realm of proven science. How one warrior could walk through a dense jungle and literally smell an ambush before the team walked into it was inexplicable. Hackett was one such individual. As a leader, Coleman had learned to respect these intuitions.
“Talk to me.”
Hackett shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve been getting the willies…like I’ve lived through all of this already, but I know I haven’t. I’ve never been to Evergreen, but I know what it looks like. I’ve never been to the Jansens’ house, but I know what it looks like.”
“Like it was in a dream?”
“Yeah.”
“What else?”
“Something bad is going to happen at that house. I don’t know what, but something bad is going to happen.”
Stroble grimaced and looked out across the landscape. “Shit.” The word was not uttered mockingly but with dread of what lay ahead.
Coleman nodded at Hackett and said, “All right. We’ll play this cool. We’ll take it real slow and scout things out before we move. If you’re still getting your bad vibes in the morning, we’ll have to come up with a different plan. Are we all in agreement?” The other two men nodded.
Anna Rielly sat on the couch, her arms wrapped around her legs, pulling them tight against her chest. Her best friend had been attempting to console her for the better part of an hour, while Michael O’Rourke alternated between sitting and pacing back and forth in front of the couch. The rain falling outside only added to the dreary mood inside the O’Rourkes’ Georgetown home.
After getting over the initial shock of finding her best friend’s husband on the front porch of her boyfriend’s house holding a gun in his hand, Rielly had listened long enough to understand that Michael O’Rourke didn’t want to talk about whatever was bothering him while they were still at Rapp’s house. He had handed Anna the mobile phone, and Liz had quickly explained to her that she should listen to Michael and follow him back to Georgetown immediately.
Anna had known instantly that it had something to do with Mitch. She had tried to ask, but again Michael made it clear that they shouldn’t talk about it until they got back to the city. This tactic did not work. Anna became understandably upset, and he was forced to tell her that Mitch was all right. This calmed her down just enough to get her into the car and under way, but that was about it. By the time they got back to the O’Rourkes’ house, she was a mess.
It took a good thirty minutes for Liz to calm her down, and as far as Michael was concerned, very little useful information came out during this time. Anna would not answer Liz’s questions, and the few times that Michael had tried to steer the conversation, his wife had given him a look that told him to butt out. Anna repeatedly stated that she couldn’t talk about what Mitch might be involved in. The only point she conceded was that Rapp’s computer consulting business was, in fact, legitimate.
O’Rourke grew increasingly frustrated with the way things were going. He wanted answers, and felt he deserved them. This was, after all, something that he did not bring on himself, much as the events involving Scott Coleman and his grandfather had been something he did not bring on himself. O’Rourke paused and thought about that one for a moment. He knew he wasn’t being entirely honest. If he had kept his mouth shut and not informed Scott Coleman about a certain senator’s complicity in getting a dozen Navy SEALs killed, that whole problem never would have developed. He had learned a hard lesson from that one. Keep your mouth shut. Secrets are better left in the dark. In a way, this was the only thing that was keeping him from taking off the kid gloves. Maybe it was better if he didn’t know what Mitch Rapp was really up to?
This line of reasoning only took the congressman so far, and then it ran into a dead end. The reality was that he was already involved, and it was not by his or his wife’s choice. It was Mitch Rapp who had sent the e-mail and asked for help. They deserved a few answers. O’Rourke needed to know what he was now involved in, and if Anna wasn’t willing to give the answers, he would go elsewhere.
O’Rourke stood and walked toward the foyer. The rain was coming-down in sheets. Looking back at his wife and Rielly, he said, “Anna, I need you to answer some questions.” Choosing his next words carefully, he added, “And I need you to answer them truthfully.”
Liz O’Rourke looked up at her husband with a scowl on her face. “Michael, I think your questions can wait.”
They were going to have it out, and at this point Michael didn’t care. It would be his Irish temper against her Italian temper. It had happened before, and it would happen again. They never got physical, and they always made up. Until today, the last five months had been a constant stream of “yes, dears.” This, Michael knew, was because of his wife’s anointed state of pregnancy. For the most part, Liz ran the show. She was a tough-minded woman, and this, among a long list of things, was why he had married her. But just as she had her strengths, he had his, too. And he feared they were in an area where he had significantly more experience than his wife.
“Do you remember,” Michael said in a stern voice, “what happened right here in this house not so long ago?” Michael pointed at the floor. “You went to the store, and when you came back, I was gone.”
Liz O’Rourke’s big brown eyes looked up at her husband, and she swallowed hard. The memory was more like a nightmare. Thanks to Michael’s grandfather and Scott Coleman, her husband had come within inches of losing his life. On the night in question, Michael had been abducted from this very house and taken to the home of one of the most powerful men in Washington. He had been brutally beaten and interrogated, and if it hadn’t been for the quick actions of CIA Director Thomas Stansfield, Michael wouldn’t be standing here right now.
“Liz.” Michael lowered his voice. “We have been dragged into this through no fault of our own. A certain dark chapter in our past has been dredged up and dangled in front of our faces.” He slowly shook his head. “And I honestly don’t know if Scott Coleman’s name was mentioned as a threat or merely an honest suggestion, but I need some answers. Can you understand that?”
Liz looked apprehensive, but she nodded. Michael walked over to the chair and sat. With hands folded and his elbows resting on his knees, he looked at Anna and said, “I know Mitch is much, much more than a computer consultant, and I’m guessing from the way you’ve been acting since I picked you up at his house that you also know he’s more than just a simple computer consultant.”
She didn’t deny nor confirm the accusation, so O’Rourke took it as a yes. “For him to send Liz that e-mail means one of three things.” Michael began ticking the options off on his fingers. “First, he’s a spy for us and quite possible a former Navy SEAL.” Rielly’s tear-fi
lled eyes squinted in a questioning manner at the SEAL comment. “Second, he’s a spy for someone else. Or third, he’s involved in something illegal like drugs.”
Anna shook her head vigorously at the last suggestion.
“Does he work for the CIA?”
“I don’t want to talk about this.” Rielly gestured with her hands for Michael to stop.
“How about the Pentagon?” he persisted.
“Don’t ask any more questions.”
“Is it the NSA?”
“Michael, no. I told you I can’t talk about this.” Rielly buried her face in her hands. “Just please leave me alone.” Anna wanted everything to stop. Her head was throbbing. All she wanted was to have Mitch home and safe. She’d been having nightmares about this very thing for the last two months. In every single one of those dreams, Mitch was dead, and it scared her in a way she had never experienced. It was unbearable to think that she could come this far, find the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, and then lose him.
Before telling her his real story, Mitch had made Anna promise that she would never discuss what he did for the CIA. Not even with her parents and surely not a U.S. congressman. But Mitch had reached out from wherever he was and contacted Liz and Michael. Anna didn’t know what to do.
“Why don’t you ask Mitch yourself?”
Michael ignored her and said, “Anna, you know what I do for a living. I can pick up a phone and have someone from the CIA sitting in this room within an hour. It’s required by law. I sit on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, and they have to answer to us. I could go down to the Hill right now, and with my security clearance I could start digging. I will probably set off some alarms at Langley and the Pentagon and God only knows where else, but people will have to answer my questions.”