by Vince Flynn
So at eighteen Chet joined the army. Two years later he was a ranger, and three years after that he joined the baddest of the bad—Delta Force. There were some bumps along the way, most of them involving bar fights or reprimands from officers who didn’t appreciate Chet’s sarcastic sense of humor and chose to focus on his lack of respect for rank. The odds were good that eventually Chet’s penchant for drinking and fighting and disrespecting officers would up and land his ass in big trouble.
Sure enough, it happened off-post one hot August night at a popular joint in Fayetteville, North Carolina. It was one of those places with dining on one side and a big dance hall on the other, where they would crank the country music and southern rock all night long. Scantily clad girls with tied up T-shirts and short shorts served ice-cold beer out of galvanized tubs, and the booze flowed at the right prices. On weekends, the place was packed with army personnel, some in uniform but most in mufti. Chet and his Delta buddies wouldn’t be caught dead wearing their uniforms off-post in a bar, so when a group of officers rolled in with their dates wearing their dress blues, Chet couldn’t resist. It started simply enough. He threw some insults in their direction that were more or less drowned out by the loud music. The group of officers could smell the Delta boys from a mile away, with their long hair, beards, mustaches, and bulging muscles. Things took a decided turn for the worse when Chet tried to cut in on a young second lieutenant whose wife was the hottest chick in the joint by a mile.
The lieutenant, who was considerably smaller than Chet, took offense. Chet shoved him, and before anyone had a chance to calm things down, a full bird colonel with jump wings, a combat infantry badge, two purple hearts, and chest full of ribbons was right in the thick of it. The rest of the Delta boys had the sense to back off, but Chet was too pissed drunk to realize he was about to cross a Rubicon that an enlisted man should never cross. The colonel informed Chet that his commanding officer was an old friend, and if he went back to his table right now, he would be willing to look the other way and forget that he ever saw him lay a hand on an officer. Chet nodded drunkenly and for a long moment seemed to consider the colonel’s offer. Then he told the officer to fuck off. The colonel was sober, squared away, and a badass in his own right. He looked to the other Delta boys and advised them to get their buddy the hell out of here before he had him thrown in the stockade.
And that was when Chet unleashed a big left hook that glanced off the top of the colonel’s head. Before anyone could react, the colonel delivered two lightning punches—the first to Chet’s nuts and the second to his solar plexus. As Chet dropped to his knees, the colonel delivered the coup de grace with an open-handed chop to the back of the neck that knocked Chet out cold.
The next day Chet woke up on a concrete floor with his neck so sore he couldn’t lift his head to take in his surroundings. It took him a moment to realize he was in the stockade at Fort Bragg. Then he heard voices. One of them was familiar. It was his CO. The events of the previous night came back to him in a fuzzy haze. Chet knew he was in some deep shit. He heard another voice and thought it sounded like that peacock colonel that he was going to pound the crap out of. Chet rolled over to get a look at them and realized he had thrown up on himself.
“Mike, it’s your call,” his CO said. “I got no problem if you want to court-martial his stupid ass.”
The colonel was dressed in his green BDUs, his pants bloused into a shiny pair of jump boots and his hands clasped behind him as if he was standing at parade rest. “I’m tempted. How the fuck does someone this stupid get into Delta these days?” He cocked his head to the side to look at the Delta CO. “When I was in with you, they actually tested us to make sure we had a brain.”
“Yeah, well, unfortunately we don’t test them when they’re drunk.”
“Maybe you should start.”
The CO turned to the door and said, “Stan, why would you want such an obvious retard?”
With great effort, Chet craned his neck to see who his commanding officer was talking to. A man in a gray suit was standing in the doorway. His hair was cut military short, but there was a casualness in the way he stood.
He regarded Chet for long moment and then said, “I remember a few times where I wanted to take a swing at an officer. I think I did once actually. Not sure, though. I was pretty drunk, too.”
The colonel who had kicked Chet’s ass shook his head in disgust. “I don’t want to waste my time dealing with this shithead . . . and God knows, Jim, your D boys don’t need any more bad publicity.”
The CO was quietly relieved. His old buddy was right. The best outcome here was to hit the eject button and let Hurley deal with this jackass. “Stan, he’s all yours.”
Stan Hurley stroked his mustache and nodded with a sense of anticipation. “Nice doing business with you, gentlemen.”
“You’re welcome.” The two officers moved down the hallway, relieved to be rid of this problem.
“Get up,” Hurley commanded.
“Who the fuck are you?” Chet mumbled.
Hurley grinned. This hayseed might have to learn things the hard way. “Who I am is none of your business. All you need to know is that I just saved you from spending the next five years of your life in Leaven-worth. Now get your ass moving, Victor.”
“My name isn’t Victor.”
“It is now. Let’s go.”
That was three years ago, and at first Chet wasn’t sure about his new line of work. He was grateful to have avoided going to jail, but he wasn’t too thrilled that he was no longer a member of the world’s most elite commando team. Before he knew it, though, Chet could see he had found the perfect place and the ultimate mentor. No more saluting, no more rules, and the best part—he got to kill people.
Bramble looked above the monitors at the photos taped to the wall of the van. There were five of them. The first one was a simple headshot, black and white. It made Bramble hate Rapp even more. The man was ruggedly handsome. Where Bramble had to chase pussy, it seemed to fall into Rapp’s lap. To add insult to the whole thing, the jerk seemed to always turn it down. “I hate you, you arrogant prick.”
Bramble wondered where Hurley had gotten the photo. They weren’t big on photos in this line of work—especially posed photos. The other four were all surveillance pics, one of them taken on this exact block in Paris, right in front of the safe house. Again, how it had been obtained, and why, gave Bramble a healthy dose of concern. Hurley or that twat Kennedy had ordered the surveillance on Rapp. No, he thought to himself, she loves him too much. He’s her little pet. She would never put him under surveillance.
It had to be Hurley. He was a smart fucker. At times Bramble thought the tough SOB hated Rapp almost as much as he did. He wants me to kill him, Bramble thought. He wants me to rid him of this problem and I’m going to be more than happy to oblige him.
CHAPTER 18
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
IRENE Kennedy was sitting in the sunroom of her two-bedroom brownstone in Old Town. Her husband was out training for yet another marathon while she was midway through her second newspaper and her third cup of tea. Her marriage could be better, but it could just as easily be worse. There was no shouting or violence, but there was an unstated truce and an underlying knowledge that they did not love each other more today than they had the year before. Kennedy was wrapped up in her work, and he was wrapped up in himself, and she couldn’t decide if she should stick with it or move on. Divorce was a messy, protracted battle, and besides, she wasn’t the kind of person who quit something so important so easily.
There was a fair amount of self-recrimination over her lack of effort, but her job afforded her little time to come up for air, and, as she’d learned over the years, her husband was hardly the kind of person who would meet her halfway. He was basically a spoiled, selfish boy who refused to grow up. This was all lost on her when they were dating—when things were easy. He was turned on by the fact that she worked for the CIA, and she was turned on by the fact that
he was a good-looking, smart man who made her laugh. He was a college professor who had a very flexible schedule, which worked well for her. When they were dating Kennedy didn’t see any of the negatives. Even the first few years of marriage went well. Then the complaining started. Karl always seemed to be getting the raw end of some deal. It usually involved a simple discussion at a party, or a double date with one of the tenured members of his department. To Kennedy the conversations seemed normal—two adults agreeing to disagree. But then they’d get home and Karl would go on for hours about how rude the other person was. How insulting the person had been and that he could tolerate a lot of things but ill-mannered adults was not one of them. Kennedy never saw it. She worked in the ultimate defend-your-position job. Day in and day out she had to take tough stances and was often told by her superiors that she was wrong. With so much going on there was no time to pout. Kennedy eventually began to see him as an incredibly insecure man who couldn’t bear the thought of being upstaged, at least intellectually. She reasoned that this was why he was teaching philosophy to freshman at American University. The job allowed him to play god to a bunch of kids who were just thrilled to be living away from their parents, and wouldn’t dare challenge a learned professor.
As she saw this ugly side of him, she instinctively withdrew, and he instinctively saw her retreat as a betrayal, and that was how they ended up in their current state of marital detente. So on Sunday mornings he ran, and she got some much-needed downtime. It also happened to be the only day she wasn’t expected to work, although if a crisis popped up it didn’t matter what day or time it was, she had to head in. None of this bothered Kennedy. Her job was interesting, challenging, frustrating, and ultimately crucial to the security of the country. What Sundays offered, as long as the enemy was cooperating, was a certain degree of solitude. It gave her the necessary time to filter through the thousands of data points she’d been dealing with during the week—all of the various operations and needs of her people and the operations that were being mounted against her country. She needed at least one day out of the week to step away from all of it and try to gain some perspective.
She was doing that on a subconscious level, while plowing through the Arts section of the Times, when the phone rang. Kennedy was irritated. It wasn’t yet 9:00 a.m., which for a Sunday morning was early. Kennedy considered not answering it, and then thought that it might be her mother. She set down her tea and walked to the kitchen where the phone was hanging from the wall. She looked at the small readout of the caller ID and her eyes narrowed. It was an international call. Kennedy had already checked the message service twice since getting out of bed and had spent a good portion of the morning wondering if Rapp had crawled into a Parisian sewer and died, which although she liked him would not be the worst possible outcome for her employer.
Calling her house directly was a major breach of protocol, but then again Rapp had proven that he wasn’t big on following her rules. Curiosity got the better of her and she reached for the handset. “Hello.”
“Good morning.”
There was no mistaking the voice on the other end. It was Rapp. Kennedy’s face flushed with resentment over his reckless ways. “You know this isn’t a secure line,” she said, not able to completely mask the annoyance in her voice. There was a frustrating sigh on the other end and then . . .
“Listen carefully.” His voice had a hard, I don’t give a shit edge to it. “As far as I’m concerned, there is no such thing as a secure line on your end.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re smart, figure it out.”
“I’m in no mood for your games,” she said in an attempt to assert control. “You’re in some hot water. There are some people who think you’ve screwed this thing up in the worst possible way, and since you haven’t bothered to check in, you’ve led them to speculate about how much you can be trusted.”
“I’m glad you fucking desk jockeys have it all figured out from four thousand miles away. I can just hear your uncle second-guessing every move I made even though he hasn’t a clue what went down.”
“Listen . . . this thing wouldn’t look any better from ten feet. It’s a mess and it’s your mess.”
“You’re damn right it is. The only problem is none of you have the foggiest idea what happened.”
“It’s hard to know what happened when your subordinate doesn’t bother to pick up the phone and check in.”
“Well . . . while you were sipping on your latte or tea or whatever the fuck it is that you drink, your subordinate was floating down a river with a bullet hole in his shoulder.”
Kennedy stared wide-eyed at the wall for a moment. Two visuals crowded her thoughts. The first was a wounded Rapp submerged in the murky water of the Seine and the second was the massive cavern beneath the National Security Agency in Maryland that housed the Cray Supercomputers, which were more than likely recording and processing this call. Chastened by Rapp’s information, she said, “I didn’t know. I’m sorry. Listen, I can be in the office in twenty minutes. Can you call me there?”
Rapp laughed. “I don’t think you understand the problem. I was set up.”
“Set up?” her face twisted into a frown.
“They were waiting for me. Your advance team missed them, and I missed them. They knew I was coming. I barely made it out of there alive.”
Kennedy was thunderstruck. “I don’t understand how that could have happened.”
“I thought that’s what you’d say. I’ll make this real simple. You’ve been compromised. I don’t know by whom, but either someone has penetrated our little group or we have a traitor among us, and since I’m the one way out on a limb getting shot at, you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t exactly trust any of you until you get it figured out.”
Kennedy was pacing from one end of the kitchen to the other, frantically trying to figure out what in hell was going on. A dozen obvious questions popped into her mind, but they were on her damn home phone, and she couldn’t risk asking what she needed to ask. She glanced at the clock on the microwave and wondered if she could catch the next flight to Paris. “I’ll come to you. I’ll bring you in.”
“And how do I know I can trust you?”
Kennedy scrambled to come up with an answer. She thought of how she had recruited him, how she had been his only advocate from the very beginning. The only one who truly recognized his talent and potential. And then she put herself in his shoes. She’d been in the field many times, but never in a situation as stressful as the one he was in right now. The sense of isolation would be overwhelming. Dr. Lewis’s admonition came back to her forcefully. They had created him, and if he turned on them . . . She shuddered at the thought. “You can trust me, and you know it.”
“I’m not really in the mood to trust anyone at the moment.”
“I’ve had your back every step of the way,” she pleaded. “I went to the mat for you yesterday.” She thought of the argument in Stansfield’s office. “Just as you guessed, my uncle was very critical.”
“That’s a shock.”
Kennedy started to say something and then held back. She really needed to talk to Stansfield and tell him what Rapp had told her. “Listen, we need to get off this line. I am going to come to you. Check the service in an hour and I will have more information for you.”
“And what makes you so sure I want to be brought in? Knowing how your uncle operates I’ll end up in solitary for a month hooked up to a car battery.”
Kennedy cringed. He was right, of course. Taking a big risk, she said, “I want you to be careful. Check the service and . . . one other thing . . . he sent some guys over yesterday to look for you.”
“Who?” Rapp said, the suspicion evident in his voice.
Kennedy hesitated and then said, “Victor, your old friend, was one of them. I argued against it.”
The omission was greeted with silence. Kennedy imagined him on the other end of the line seething—his laserlike focus fe
eding off his hatred for Victor. “They’re keeping an eye on the apartment. Don’t go there,” Kennedy offered. “I will be there as soon as I can to bring you in. All right? Check the service. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I’ll think about it.” There was a long pause and then Rapp said, “There were five men who crashed the meeting. I took care of four of them. There was one left . . . the one who winged me. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Kennedy’s brow creased with wrinkles, as she tried to decipher what he was saying. “No.”
“I stuck to protocol. I didn’t do anything I wasn’t authorized to do.”
“Okay,” Kennedy said, still trying to figure out what he was hinting at.
“I wasn’t the only one who walked out of there. The fifth man is responsible for the other three. I went out the window.”
“I’m still not sure I understand . . .”
“You’ll figure it out. I have to go.”
The line went dead and Kennedy slowly placed the handset back in its cradle. She replayed the entire conversation in her head, wondering if there was anything that the NSA or FBI could use against her. It was all pretty vague, but it might be enough to land her on someone’s radar screen. She cursed Rapp for calling her at home and then thought about what he’d told her. That it had been a setup. She was moving across the room for the front hall closet without thinking. She needed to brief Stansfield immediately. She grabbed her coat and her car keys from the hook by the door. She hoped Stansfield would see things her way. If he didn’t, she prayed Dr. Lewis was wrong. The last thing they needed was an enraged Rapp looking to settle a score.
CHAPTER 19
PARIS, FRANCE
THE black Renault sedan had tinted windows that made it impossible to see who was in the backseat. It was double-parked in front of the luxurious Hotel Balzac only a few blocks from the Arc de Triomphe. A policeman had already tried to move the car but was rebuffed by the driver, who sat securely behind the sedan’s bulletproof windows. The driver was armed with a unique badge that sent the police officer on his way. He also wore a gun on his right hip. The other man in the front seat had the same badge and gun and also had access to an Uzi submachine gun, which was hidden under the dashboard. The vehicle was retrofitted with a thin skin of Kevlar between its frame and the metal exterior. The man in the backseat had traveled the world and had seen more than a few men gunned down in their cars, so he took this aspect of his personal security very seriously.