by Vince Flynn
Hurley stood, subconsciously running through the list of physical ailments that could compromise the op if it got hot. After fifteen or so, he gave up and pulled a Camel from the pack in his jacket. He held a lighter to the innocent-looking white cylinder and inhaled a lungful of smoke. Over the years, he’d been shot, stabbed, garroted, thrown from a ship a hundred miles from shore, and poisoned. The last by a cute little Czech woman he was screwing. Kind of funny that the Grim Reaper had ditched his scythe and snuck up behind him with a tobacco leaf. Just another limp dick in a robe.
He started looking around the room again, getting the blood flowing as he walked. No update from Rapp yet. He was probably still in the tunnel. When he got out and found that the target hadn’t been located, he wasn’t going to be happy. Not that anyone would blame Hurley, but that didn’t matter. This wasn’t a business of excuses. You either got the job done or you didn’t.
So, what now?
The guard would be standing just outside the closed door, making it impossible for Hurley to simply wander out and play the befuddled old man if he came across anyone. He might be able to bash the man’s head in with one of the room’s antique knickknacks, but the chance of that compromising the op was nearly one hundred percent.
Hurley felt an all-too-familiar constriction in his lungs and put a handkerchief to his mouth, coughing uncontrollably into it. About halfway through his fit, the door opened and the guard who had led him there appeared. The good news was the desperate hacking would play into his cover as a helpless geriatric. The bad news was that it wasn’t an act. Hurley really was struggling to keep from collapsing and the handkerchief really was spattered with bloody specks of what had once been his lungs.
“Mr. Obrecht will see you now,” the guard said, apparently unconcerned about the man choking in front of him.
Hurley wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and walked unsteadily toward the door. “Thank you.”
“Second floor,” the guard said, falling in a pace behind.
Hurley suppressed a smile as he headed for a broad set of steps supported by marble pillars. The timing would be perfect. When Rapp and the frog came out of that tunnel, he’d already have Obrecht wrapped up like a birthday present.
A skylight in the domed ceiling threw a shadow and Hurley kept his eye on the guard’s as they began to ascend. The man was three steps back with his assault rifle held against his chest. The image got increasingly dim as they ascended, but not so dim that Hurley didn’t see the rifle suddenly begin to rise. He spun, lunging for the man just as the plastic butt caught him in the side of the head. The blow dazed him, but his momentum was still sufficient to send them both toppling down the steps.
When they hit the landing, Hurley’s head was swimming, and it felt like someone had jammed a hot knife in his hip joint. The other man had come through the fall in much better condition. Protected from the steps by his body armor and youth, he was on his feet before Hurley could even get to his knees.
This time when the rifle butt came down, there was nothing he could do.
CHAPTER 23
THE emergency lights bathed everything in red as Rapp pulled himself through the tunnel using his elbows. After a reasonably spacious entrance, the shaft had shrunk down to a cramped three feet wide by two feet high.
Rapp had suffered from mild claustrophobia since he was a kid. Years of fighting in the open spaces of America and the Middle East had made it worse for good reason: The speed, endurance, and accuracy that gave him his edge tended to be neutralized in these environments.
The fact that Gould’s feet were close enough to his face that he could smell the rubber soles offered some comfort. If anyone discovered them and hosed down the tunnel from the mansion side, the Frenchman would act as a reluctant shield. Even more important, the shaft was too tight for Gould to turn on him.
“I think I see it,” the Frenchman said, his whisper echoing through the narrow space. “Twenty meters.”
Rapp’s grip on his Glock tightened as they continued forward to a steel wall covered in surface rust. They found a keypad similar to the one at the tunnel’s entrance and Gould punched in another lengthy code. There was a moment of tense silence followed by the hum of an electric motor.
Rapp lowered the night-vision goggle mounted to his helmet and flipped it on. The next-generation system combined the light amplification of traditional starlight scopes with thermal imaging. Normally, he’d have refused it due to the bulk and weight, but there were enough unknowns about the basement they were about to enter to make it worthwhile. Tests at the Farm suggested the unit would give him a solid view of the ambient environment while highlighting the body heat of human targets.
“You ready, Mitch?”
“Go.”
Gould shoved the steel barrier outward and threw himself to the dirt floor on the other side. He rolled smoothly to the right while Rapp went left as planned.
The light amplification capability of the goggle was barely functional due to the depth of the darkness. Thermal picked up a little temperature variation, but other than Gould glowing orange, most everything just read as hazy shades of green. Rapp had to move far slower than he would have liked, avoiding the unidentifiable clutter on his way to an overturned barrel. Gould nearly tripped, but managed to save it and take cover behind something that looked vaguely like an ancient winepress. Rapp spotted a reddish smear at the edge of his peripheral vision but didn’t bother tracking it. Most likely a rat.
Other than that, nothing. No sound. No movement. In fact, nothing that would suggest anyone had been down there in years. Rapp swept his gun over a dark hole in the wall that he guessed was a medieval well and then slipped around the left side of the barrel. He motioned Gould forward and the Frenchman moved cautiously to a low pile of rubble. They leapfrogged that way, moving purposefully until they found themselves at the base of the staircase that led up to the main house.
Gould pointed right to a rectangle in the wall that their goggles shaded blue. The cold steel of the entrance to Obrecht’s safe room.
Rapp covered the Frenchman as he ran to it and smeared a bead of epoxy into the narrow gap between the edge of the door and the jamb. Not exactly high-tech, but it would be enough to keep the Swiss banker from gaining access should things go south. Obrecht’s only option at that point would be the tunnel, where he would flee right into the welcoming arms of Joe Maslick.
Gould returned and led up the stairs with Rapp a few steps behind. They retracted their goggles and removed their helmets when the light bleeding around the basement door became strong enough for them to see. Rapp stowed the helmets beneath a stack of stained towels on the landing while the Frenchman slid a fiber-optic cable beneath the door. The image from the tiny camera read out on his phone, displaying exactly what they’d hoped to see: an empty hallway.
Rapp activated his throat mike and spoke quietly. “We’re exiting the basement onto the first floor. Stan, give me a sitrep.”
No response.
It was one of the unavoidable drawbacks to their plan. His silence could mean that he was dead and that they were walking into an ambush, or it could mean that he was with Obrecht and not in a position to respond.
“Scott. Update.”
“Stan got called in to meet with Obrecht while you were offline. No communication from him since. We’re in position and ready to go.”
“Roger that. Stan, if you can hear this and you’re in Obrecht’s office, try to toggle your mike.”
He waited for a moment and then the banker’s accented voice came over his earpiece.
“I’ve had my people check on this, and I can assure you that my bank does no—”
The feed went dead and Rapp gave Gould a thumbs-up. Hurley was where he was supposed to be, but couldn’t communicate beyond briefly pressing the button on his key fob.
Gould eased the door open and slipped through with Rapp following. The main staircase was to their left, but it was the centerpiece of the ma
nsion’s entry hall and in full view of no fewer than six windows. They went right, skirting the kitchen and entering a narrow servant’s staircase. Gould aimed his Glock upward as they ascended, with Rapp keeping an eye on their flank.
When they came to the door at the top, Gould did another quick search with the fiber-optic camera and then went through. They were halfway up the wide hallway when they heard a woman’s voice singing quietly. The two men ducked into a bedroom and pressed their backs against the wall behind the half-open door.
Of all the rooms in the mansion she could have chosen to clean that day, she picked that one.
Rapp grabbed Gould’s wrist when the assassin aimed his silenced pistol at the back of her head. While the proliferation of surveillance cameras throughout the world was a serious drawback for men in their profession, the invention of the iPod almost made up for it. Rapp spotted the ubiquitous white earphones and motioned toward the hallway. She never noticed the two armed men slipping out of the room only a few feet behind her, concentrating instead on the sheets she was unfolding and the latest dance track from Madonna.
They were able to pick up their pace on the thick carpet and it took only seconds to reach the second-to-last door on the right. According to Gould, Leo Obrecht’s office was just beyond.
Rapp put an ear to the wall, but it was too thick to hear anything inside. Hopefully, they’d find Obrecht and Hurley having a pleasant conversation over tea. A set of flex cuffs and some duct tape would be all it would take to get their package ready to go back through the tunnel. Next stop, a CIA black site in Bulgaria.
Rapp put a hand on the knob and nodded a silent three count. He didn’t throw open the door like he normally would, instead pushing it gently enough that Obrecht wouldn’t get spooked if he saw it.
Luck was with them. They slipped inside the study unnoticed, the book-lined walls and tapestries absorbing what little sound they made. At the far side, a heavyset man with his back to them was poking at the embers in a massive stone fireplace. A modern steel sculpture partially obscured both him and a portion of the right side of the room, but not enough that Rapp couldn’t immediately determine that Hurley wasn’t there.
The man at the fireplace was the size Rapp expected from the surveillance photos and he had the right expensive suit and short-cropped gray hair, but there was something about him that seemed off. The barely perceptible athleticism in the way he stood. The effortless way he handled the heavy iron poker.
Rapp spun toward Gould, but was just a fraction of a second too slow. The Frenchman swept a foot low, taking Rapp’s legs out from under him. He hit the carpet rolling just as the man near the fireplace spun around to reveal the MP5 in his free hand. The sculpture obscured his head, but Rapp resisted the urge to go for a body shot. He knew instinctively that the man’s bulk was the result of full body armor. It was a perfect way to imitate an overweight banker while making him impervious to small arms fire. There was a weakness in the mercenary’s preparations, though: his expensive Italian shoes.
Rapp fired a round into the left one and used his momentum to swing his Glock toward Gould.
“Don’t do it, Mitch!”
The assassin had his own pistol lined up in a two-handed grip. And while Rapp could no longer see the merc behind him, the silence suggested he hadn’t fallen. If he was tough and disciplined enough to stay upright with the ball of his foot missing, it was likely that the MP5 was also on target.
“Drop the weapon, Mitch. And don’t get your hands anywhere near that throat mike.”
Rapp let the Glock fall to the carpet.
“And Stan’s.”
He reached for Hurley’s Kimber Gold Match as he slowly stood.
“You’ve got two guns trained on you, Mitch. And neither one of us are the illiterate goat herders you’re used to. Understand?”
“There’s no way Obrecht can be paying you enough for this,” Rapp said, retrieving the Kimber and then letting it fall from his hand.
“Fifteen million and a new identity so clean even the CIA won’t be able to track me. But it’s not the money.”
“What then?” Rapp said, though he already knew the answer. The truth was, he always had.
“You’re my only failure, Mitch. I thought I’d forget about it as time went on, but it just got worse.” He eased left to put himself in a position that would allow him to avoid a cross fire if Rapp made a move. “I had you dead to rights in Afghanistan. I can’t believe the idiot who hired me blew it like that.”
“What about your wife and daughter, Louis? How do they fit in with your new identity?”
It took Gould a few seconds to respond. “Seemed like a fair trade. I lose them but I become the man who killed a legend.”
The door opened, but it didn’t even cause a flicker of distraction in Gould. He kept his eyes locked on target as Stan Hurley was pushed through. The old man staggered and nearly fell, holding the back of his head with a blood-soaked hand.
“Stan,” the Frenchman said cheerfully. “You’re just in time to be the icing on my cake.”
CHAPTER 24
ROME
ITALY
KABIR Gadai checked his phone and then laid it back on the table. The screen continued to display Isabella Accorso’s daughter in the crosshairs, as it had for the last forty minutes.
He felt the unaccustomed sensation of nervousness spreading from his stomach to his extremities, producing a barely perceptible tremor in his hands. The life he’d led was one of careful plans rewarded with an uninterrupted string of successes. This situation, though, had been beyond his control from the beginning. It was one thing to trust in God, but another to rely on his intervention. Allah might see this as arrogance and punish those involved.
Bianca Accorso was a young woman with highly predictable habits, and Gadai was confident that she would remain sitting with her friends for precisely another seventeen minutes. Taj was certain that this time wouldn’t expire without her mother bringing the files, but it would be idiocy not to plan for a worst-case scenario.
A quick return to Pakistan would be the most obvious course of action, but he had been serving Taj for too long to think that was a viable option. If he arrived without the Rickman files, it would be the beginning of his own destruction. Not immediately, of course. Taj was too subtle for that. But within the year, he would find himself accused of treason or assassinated by one of the Taliban loyal to Taj.
If Accorso didn’t appear in the next twenty minutes, it seemed almost certain that she had contacted the Italian authorities. Gadai would have no choice but to run. He would never be able to return to his country. He would never see his sons again. His life would become nothing more than an endless procession of days consumed with trying to stay ahead of Taj’s assassins.
His Bluetooth earpiece buzzed and he pressed the button to pick up the call.
“Go ahead.”
“She’s entered the lobby.”
“Any sign of the police?”
“None.”
Gadai let out a relieved breath and walked across the room to the door. There was no denying that as great as the risks were, the rewards were equally great: a position second only to Taj at the helm of the modern era’s first Muslim superpower. He would have a hand in spreading Islam across the globe in a way that had never before been imagined. All while the Americans cowered.
Gadai peered through the peephole, looking across the hallway at room 200. It would be over soon, he reassured himself. Taj had once again been right. While terrifying and unpredictable, he was a great man favored by God.
“She’s exiting the stairway,” the voice said over his earpiece. “Twenty seconds. No other activity.”
Accorso appeared a few moments later with an envelope under her arm. He watched her from behind as she knocked timidly on the door of the empty room.
“Still clear?” he asked.
His men were monitoring the parking lot, the lobby, and all points of entry to the second floor.
“Yes, sir.”
Gadai opened the door. “Isabella.”
She spun, fear and surprise playing out across her face.
“Come in,” he said, keeping his words purposely vague. If she was wearing a wire, the police would assume he was in room 200 instead of being across the hall.
The woman did as she was told and he closed the door behind her.
“Have you brought me what I asked for?”
She gave a short nod and held out the envelope.
Gadai sat at a desk that he’d moved away from the draped window and tore open the flap. He inserted the thumb drive he found into his laptop and began perusing the accompanying single page of paper while it loaded.
The written instructions were somewhat more complex than he’d expected. Files were individually designated and various scenarios were laid out, each with a different release schedule.
“You’re following the second scenario?” Gadai asked.
Accorso nodded, perspiration beginning to form on her upper lip. “We were informed that Akhtar Durrani died by an authenticated email. When we didn’t hear from the client, we released file D-six on the third of the month.”
He nodded noncommittally. It would have contained the information on the Russian mole in Istanbul. The next file to be released, designated R-12, was scheduled for Thursday. What revelations did it contain? The identity of a highly placed informant? A list of bribes to foreign officials? Evidence of wrongdoing by the CIA’s administration? It was impossible not to speculate.
“And by ‘released’ you mean you simply sent it to the email address in the instructions.”
“Yes.”
“Have you looked at the files?”
“They’re encrypted.”
“Do you know who the client is?”
“He’s anonymous. He contacts me by phone once per week and gives me one of the pass phrases listed on the instruction sheet.”
Gadai scrolled through the list of files contained on the thumb drive, feeling a growing sense of elation. They had anticipated twenty or thirty. Instead there were hundreds. How much had Rickman known? What level of access had he enjoyed? Could Taj be right? Could this innocuous data-storage device contain the means to the Central Intelligence Agency’s destruction?