by Vince Flynn
Rapp entered the alley from the east. He was wearing a tiny wireless earpiece and Coleman was giving him updates.
“That’s the one. Turn left.”
Rapp didn’t reply. He simply turned and started down the dirty alley. He was in a two-story canyon of bricks and mortar. At the street level on each side were dry cleaners, video rental, restaurants, an electronics store, and a menagerie of restaurants and the other businesses that dot the urban landscape of any big city. The second stories consisted of offices and a few apartments. Coleman and his team had done a good job. This was a perfect site for the takedown.
Rapp stepped around a foul-smelling puddle of liquid and checked the windows on the second story. Only two lights were on. They were both near the middle of the block. The street lights at both ends had been taken care of earlier in the week along with seven other lights in the neighborhood. One of Coleman’s men had walked around with a .22-caliber silenced pistol and shot them out. It was Urban Espionage 101. Their way of prepping the battlefield. They’d monitored the police scanner while doing it to make sure no one had called it in. In a big city like this it would take months before the lights would get fixed. And in the meantime someone like Khalil would have a few days to adjust to the change in his environment.
Coleman reported that they’d watched Khalil walk home that first night after they’d shot out the lights. He didn’t even notice the change. Rapp couldn’t believe it. This guy was incredibly stupid. Had no concept of the gravity of the situation he’d involved himself in. Here he was recruiting young men to go off and fight for his extremist arcane view of Islam, and he honestly thought he was safe just because a liberal Canadian official was afraid of being labeled intolerant.
Rapp was a soldier in a war, and this Khalil was an enemy combatant. No, that wasn’t right. If he’d gone into battle himself he would’ve been a combatant and maybe Rapp could have given the man an ounce of respect. Like suicide bombers. Politics aside, calling them cowards couldn’t be further from the truth. It took a pair of balls to strap on a vest filled with explosives, walk into a crowd, and blow yourself up. It also took a sick, twisted, and warped mind, but they weren’t cowards.
Rapp would not lose any sleep over this one. Not that he normally did anyway. Khalil was a coward. He stood up in his minbar, the pulpit in a mosque, every Friday and spewed his vitriolic hatred for the West and especially America. He poisoned the young minds of impressionable men and duped them into joining his jihad. Then he and his fellow cowards enslaved these young men and turned them into human bombs. Khalil risked nothing, and Rapp would feel nothing.
Rapp reached the other end of the alley. It was perfectly dark. A sliver of a moon was rising in the east, barely adding to the ambient light of the city itself. The wall where he wanted to stage the incident was just as Coleman had said. A good ten feet of brick and then a Dumpster. The concealment was ideal. Even a worthy adversary would have little chance against an ambush like this. Of course if it was a worthy adversary, he’d skip the knife and use the silenced gun. Rapp’s eyes adjusted to the extremely faint light. He squatted down to get a better look at the ground and found a soda can and several beer bottles. He quietly picked them up with his gloved hands and set them under the Dumpster. The last thing he needed was to kick something like a beer bottle and alert the target that he was behind him.
Rapp settled in against the brick wall. Any minute now. He’d timed his arrival so he wouldn’t be left standing around exposed for too long. Coleman’s voice came over his earpiece and announced that Khalil was locking the front door to the mosque. Several men were standing outside talking to him. Nothing unusual, reported Coleman. Now Khalil was on the move and headed Rapp’s way.
Rapp leaned against the wall. Flexed his legs and hands. Cracked his neck to the left and then the right. The blood was flowing, his heart rate was right where he wanted it to be. He was at that perfect equilibrium between being too loose or too tight. He was poised on the balls of his feet, ready to get it over with.
The first sign of trouble came almost immediately. Coleman’s gravelly voice came over Rapp’s earpiece with a tone of frustration. “We’ve got a problem. He’s not alone.”
Rapp’s eyes stayed fixed on the brick wall opposite his position. A small mike was pinned to the collar of his jacket. He whispered, “How many?”
“Our guy plus two.”
“Shit,” Rapp muttered under his breath. “Do we have an ID on the other two?”
“Negative.”
Rapp pictured in his mind how it would play out. One additional guy would be okay. One quick pistol butt to the back of the neck and he’d be out cold. A leg sweep on Khalil and he’d be on his back before he ever knew what hit him. Three, though, was a problem. It would take less than a second to shoot all three in the back of the head, but killing the two unknowns was not an option. Not Rapp’s style. If he tried to knock the other two out and then take Khalil it could get messy. One of them might get away or at least scream and alert some of the neighbors. Or worse, if they were armed, one of them might shoot him.
“I think we should abort,” said Coleman.
“Negative. Let’s see how it plays out. How much time do I have?”
“Approximately three minutes until he reaches you.”
Rapp nodded to himself. Three minutes was a long time. He played a few more scenarios out in his mind. They all came up short. The problem was how he wanted it to look. He could easily shoot Khalil and tell the others to run, but then he’d end up with the exact mess that Kennedy wanted to avoid. Maybe he’d just follow the idiot right into his apartment and cap him.
“One of the guys just peeled off,” Coleman said.
“Good,” said Rapp. “We’re back on. Everyone look sharp. Two isn’t a problem. Hold your positions unless I give the word.”
Rapp flexed his hands again and edged over to the corner. He looked left then right. The street was empty. No pedestrians. No cars. Coleman and the others relayed the position of the two men like it was a countdown for a shuttle launch, but instead of using seconds they were using blocks. Rapp’s pulse picked up a bit as they neared. Nothing unusual, just the body getting ready for action. The adrenaline would begin to kick in a bit, and then he’d have to move or he’d get that lead in the boots feeling. They were getting close. Rapp shifted his weight from one foot to the other and then bounced from side to side like a boxer stepping into the ring.
There was a minivan with tinted windows parked thirty feet away. In the cargo area one of Coleman’s men was watching intently, ready to pop the door at the first sign of trouble. He was armed with a silenced pistol. No need for anything more powerful. At the opposite end of the block, Coleman would now be taking up position with the second van. If anything should go wrong three separate rallying points were already set. If things went well, they’d simply dispose of Rapp’s clothes, and head back to the hotel, catch a few hours of sleep, and fly out first thing in the morning.
Rapp could hear them now. They were speaking in Arabic. He could hear their footfalls on the cement sidewalk. There were two men. Rapp could tell by the noise. One of them dragged his feet and the other one was a heel-to-toe walker. Coleman’s calm voice came over the tiny earpiece.
“Khalil is closer to you. The other man is walking on the street side. Both of them have their hands in their pockets.”
Rapp pictured them in his mind. He had no idea if either man was armed, but with the element of surprise on his side it wouldn’t matter. He actually preferred that they had their hands in their pockets. If it was someone with more experience it would worry him, but not with these two. Khalil truly was a moron. Anyone with half a brain would vary the route he took to and from the mosque. He would notice that the streetlights that were working a week ago were now out. He would step out onto the street when approaching a blind alley. He would be aware of his surroundings. But this guy wasn’t.
They were close now. Coleman was counting down their
approach, and Rapp could clearly hear their conversation. They would appear in just a few seconds. Rapp turned toward the sidewalk and dropped to a crouch, ready to spring. He had decided to keep his left hand free. He held the gun in his right. He saw their long shadows appear, cast from a streetlight down at the other end of the block. Time slowed. All of his senses heightened. At the other end of the long, dark alley he heard the rattling engine of a late model car as it passed by. He was perfectly concealed in the dark canyon. His entire body coiled, ready to strike.
They appeared side by side. Rapp held his position. Let them pass so their peripheral vision would not be able to detect him. He slowly rose up, but only a foot. He took his first silent step, and then his second. He was exposed now, and he moved quickly, still in a crouch. At the last second he stood to his full height. He was up on the balls of his feet, his weight leaning slightly forward. Both men were within reach and neither of them so much as flinched. Rapp’s right hand came crashing down, the grip of the pistol striking the unknown man on the back right side of his neck. Rapp had rethought his original plan. Instead of using a leg sweep, he planted his left foot, spun to the right, dropped down a few feet and delivered a hammerlike blow to Khalil’s right kidney.
Rapp continued through the move, looking to his right to make sure the other guy was out of commission. The man was falling face-first to the sidewalk, his hands limp at his sides. He was already unconscious. Khalil’s mouth was open, gasping for air. His back arched, his hands reaching for the area where he’d been hit. His neck was completely exposed. He might as well already be dead. Rapp’s left hand shot up and clamped down on the terrorist’s throat like the jaws of some lethal carnivore. Rapp was now eye to eye with Khalil, positioned as if they were dance partners doing some intricate move. The man’s eyes spoke of pure fear, which was probably the same expression worn by the young boys when they realized they were strapped behind the wheel of a car filled with explosives.
With the man’s neck firmly in the grasp of his gloved hand, Rapp forced Khalil’s chin up and began driving him back into the shadows of the alley. A basic tenet of hand-to-hand combat is that the body goes where the head goes. Khalil wrapped his hands around Rapp’s forearm, but it was already too late. His larynx half crushed, his body completely off balance, Khalil could do nothing but watch in absolute horror as the final seconds of his life played out before him like some awful nightmare. It was the perfect justice for a man who had preached terror and hatred for over two decades.
Rapp accelerated his move, wrenching Khalil’s head back as far as it would go. The man was beyond stumbling. He was on his way down, and there was nothing that would keep him on his feet. Rapp used Khalil’s weight against him. At the last second he thrust his left arm out like a piston and slammed the back of Khalil’s head into the hard unforgiving pavement. The man’s entire body went limp a split second after impact. There was a good chance the blow was fatal, but Rapp wasn’t about to leave anything to chance.
He wasted no time. He put the gun back in his pocket, spun, took a few steps, and grabbed the feet of the other man. Coleman and his team were under specific orders not to get out of their vehicles unless Rapp called for them. Rapp dragged the unknown man into the alley and deposited him next to the Dumpster. Next, he grabbed Khalil under the arms and propped him up against the brick wall of the building. Everything was done without hesitation and with great efficiency. Rapp grabbed the knife from his left pocket, pressed the button and heard the spring-loaded blade snap into position. Standing off to the right, Rapp placed his right hand on Khalil’s forehead and stuck the blade into the man’s neck just beneath his right ear. The hard steel went in with little trouble. Rapp then gripped the knife firmly and drew the weapon across Khalil’s neck, slicing him from one ear to the other.
5
RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA
At first glance the man appeared to fit in. He was wearing the traditional garb of a Saudi businessman. A white thawb, or robe made of cotton, was draped over his shoulders and stopped short of his ankles, and his sandy brown hair was covered with a ghutra and tied with an ornamental rope to keep it in place. Upon closer inspection, though, there were telltale signs that he was not native to the Arabian Peninsula. His skin was tan, but not the right shade, he was clean shaven and wearing heavy-soled black dress shoes instead of sandals, and above all else, his eyes were a muted blue, almost gray color. At the moment, however, those eyes were concealed behind a large pair of black sunglasses.
It was only 9:00 a.m. in Riyadh, and the temperature was pushing 100 degrees. Erich Abel didn’t mind the heat, though. He actually preferred it. Having grown up asthmatic, he found the dry arid climate of Saudi Arabia’s capital far preferable to the humid weather of the coastal cities on the Red Sea. Abel had a genuine interest in Saudi Arabia. Not because of the climate, really, or even because of the people. It had more to do with how it would soon shape history. It was an exciting place to conduct business.
The former East German spy believed in going native. It was the only way to really understand a culture. In truth, though, that was only part of the reason he wore the traditional Arab garb. The reality was, Saudi Arabia had become a very dangerous place for Westerners. Kidnapping was of course a constant possibility, but anyone dumb enough to grab him would return him as soon as they found out who he worked for, and then they would beg forgiveness at the foot of Prince Muhammad. The real problem was the increase in random killings by the crazed Wahhabis. There was great unrest in the desert kingdom, and it was very important to be as inconspicuous as possible.
If Abel had a true talent in life it was predicting change. When he’d worked for the Stasi, the ruthless and much feared East German Secret Police, he’d been the only one in his office to predict the collapse of communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall. He’d passed his reports up the chain of command, and they’d all told him he was too young to know what he was talking about. Just twenty-nine when the wall fell, Abel was looked upon as an overeducated intellectual by the cold-blooded ranks within Stasi headquarters in East Berlin. The Stasi prided itself on a certain crass ruthlessness that Abel lacked. Truth be told, he would have fit in better with the British foreign intelligence service, MI6. Abel had great respect for the Brits. They ran creative operations and took great joy in outwitting their adversaries. The Stasi was more like a very efficient and ruthless American organized crime family. At any rate, no one wanted to hear his predictions that their reign of terror was drawing to an end.
Abel had been a sickly child, in and out of hospitals. When he was out, he spent much of his time in bed with barely the strength to read. While the other kids advanced physically, he advanced intellectually. He graduated from university early, at the age of twenty and with dual degrees in math and economics, and was recruited by the Stasi. The employment opportunities in East Germany in the early eighties were not good. That fact combined with the idea of doing some bullying after being picked on for much of his youth appealed to him in a perversely satisfying way.
For the first three years with the Stasi he pushed to get transferred from the analytical side to the operations side, but his delicate appearance always prevented him from reaching his goal. Abel stood five feet ten inches tall, but back then he weighed just 145 pounds. Slowly, he put on weight and spent every moment of his free time working out in hopes that he could pass the physical requirements needed to get out from behind his desk.
He was rewarded in his fourth year by a transfer to operations and began taking part in the systematic kidnappings of Westerners who traveled to East Germany. Abel would help identify targets and sometimes even lure them into traps. His baby face and slight stature meant he could pass for a young teenage boy. Homosexual businessmen who traveled to the east were easy targets for blackmail. Abel would loiter on the appropriate corner, or park, or bar and wait for a man to come along and make a lewd request. He’d give the proper hand signal and the other members would swoop in, throw the m
an into the back of a van, then dump him in an interrogation room. The man would then be told he could choose between jail and public humiliation, or he could buy his freedom. Abel recalled, all these years later, that all of them but one chose to buy their freedom. That stubborn son of a bitch was eventually taken to an extremely harsh location where after a month of beatings he was strangled to death by a very sadistic and homophobic Stasi officer.
Each kidnapping would usually yield several thousand marks. The Stasi had contacts in almost all of the western banks and they would do their homework before they named the price of freedom. His ultimate catch was a West German noble who brought in $500,000. The man was in their custody for less than twenty-four hours. Abel estimated that his unit alone had brought in over five million dollars in a two-and-a-half-year period.
After that he was promoted to counterintelligence, which gave him reason to travel to West Germany more frequently. He was just getting involved in some serious spycraft when everything fell apart. He’d been warning his superiors for months that the signs were there, but they were too busy shuttling back and forth to Moscow kissing the asses of their KGB bosses. The last thing they wanted to do was tell the autocrats at the KGB that they were losing control of the Soviet Union’s westernmost European satellite. Such news was likely to get them marched out back and shot in the head.
Abel had studied the economics of East versus West. He knew the numbers manufactured by the governments in East Germany and Russia to be false. As a general rule, he divided them in half in order to recalibrate for exaggeration and deception. The West, however, was a different matter. The evil capitalists had these things called corporations, and these corporations had a fiduciary responsibility to be honest with their shareholders. An amazing amount of data was public information. Every time Abel ran the numbers he came away with the same conclusion. They were getting their asses handed to them by the West, and they were about to collapse under the weight of their lies and economic inefficiencies. The empirical economic signs were right there for anyone who opened their eyes. The data on its own should have been enough, but Abel saw something else that was equally alarming.