by Vince Flynn
As she ascended the staircase she kept the pistol concealed in the folds of her coat. It was cocked and the safety was off. There was no need to check and see if a round was chambered, because she never carried a gun without a round in the chamber. She spoke to Rapp over her mobile phone as she went. At each landing she paused briefly to listen and check the next flight. She had a slight buzz from the two martinis, but the walk home in the crisp night air had helped to awaken her senses. That, and the man sitting in the car down on the street. Rapp didn’t have to spell it out for her. Someone didn’t like loose ends, and they were willing to keep killing until the trail went cold. There was one other option, and that was why she wasn’t telling Rapp what he wanted to know. The U.S. was an ally, but that only went so far.
The CIA was not beyond lying to get what they wanted, and there could be no doubt that they’d love to find out who her controller was. The man sitting in the car could be someone sent to kill her, or he could just as likely be an employee of the CIA, either sent to kill her or scare her into telling Rapp who had hired her. Maybe that’s why Rapp saw the man before she did. Because he knew the man was going to be there. Welcome to the paranoid world of spying.
By the time she reached the fourth floor she’d hung up on Rapp, and she’d made up her mind. If anyone was waiting for her in her flat they were fair game. She’d go in shooting. She stood silently in the shadows of the open stairwell for a few moments, patiently searching for a sign that someone was waiting for her. She put the cell phone away and for a second thought of taking her boots off so she could make it down the hall without noise. Then she realized if anyone was in her flat they would have already been alerted by the man on the street.
Donatella took off her coat and retrieved a knife and her keys from her purse. She threw her coat over her shoulder and started down the hall. When she reached the door to her flat she stood off to one side and placed the key in the lock. She turned the key and pushed in the door. The four-panel door swung open by itself while she stayed in the hallway protected by the heavy door frame. With one eye peeking into the narrow foyer, she looked at the credenza on the right to see if anything had been disturbed. The three framed photos and the flower arrangement were as she’d left them.
She reached in and turned the light on and then before stepping into the narrow foyer, she peered through the crack where the door was connected to the frame to make sure no one was waiting behind it. It was clear. She entered her flat, the heels of her boots announcing very clearly that it was a woman. She paused for a moment and then reached out with a second key and locked the closet on her left. Clearing closets was a two person job, and even then it was a good way to get killed. She set the keys down on the credenza along with her purse, and then with a deep breath to steel herself, she walked toward her living room as casually as her nerves would allow.
Her pistol was up and level in her right hand, and the knife was in her left, reversed so the blade was hidden against her forearm. Even now just several feet from the end of the foyer she could see no more than half of the rectangular shaped room. All four corners were hidden from her sight. If she were waiting in someone’s apartment she knew exactly where she’d be positioned. With her left hand she flipped the switch up and the ceiling light and two lamps in the room flickered to life.
Donatella paused briefly, listening for the sound of movement, her gun pointed where she thought her assassin might come from, but there was nothing. Pulling her coat from her shoulder, she swung it underhand and launched it into the room where it landed on the arm of the couch just to the left. Like a gymnast, Donatella followed the jacket into the room with a diving forward somersault. In midair she heard the telltale sound of a subsonic round leaving the end of a silencer. It had come from the direction she’d anticipated. In the split second it took for her to hit the ground she knew the assassin had missed. Donatella rolled forward between the couch and a chair and sprang to her knees. Her silenced Walther was up and rapidly moving toward the source of the shot.
Before she’d come to a stop she found her target and fired a single well aimed shot. The only thing she noticed about the man was his dark hair and his gun coming to bear on her. Up on one knee, Donatella spun to her right as her eye caught some motion, and moved her arm quickly to acquire a second target. Before she could get off a shot she felt the stinging impact of a bullet slamming into her right shoulder. The shot knocked her off-balance and she started to fall. In slow motion she watched her gun drop from her unresponsive fingers, and then she felt something slice through her hair.
23
Rapp rounded the last corner and instead of taking a hard right and coming up directly behind the car, he crossed over to the other side of the street. He was breathing hard from the sprint but ignored the pain. He was too close to getting the answer he desperately needed. Rapp saw the car up ahead on his right as he ran down the sidewalk in a slight crouch. His eyes scanned the parked cars and sidewalk for any signs of trouble. There was no turning back.
He was close now. He kept his eye on the car at the next corner and then slowed enough to cut in between two parked vehicles. He darted out into the street at the perfect place. He was in the car’s blind spot, moving toward it quickly. Rapp drew his gun with his left hand and took aim. With ten feet to go he squeezed the trigger.
The bullet leaving the thick black silencer barely made a noise, and the safety glass window breaking on the driver’s side wasn’t much louder. At least from the exterior of the car, but from the inside it was considerably louder. The man sitting behind the wheel jerked spastically in reaction to the shattered glass. His arms flew up in a vain attempt to stop the thousands of broken pieces from hitting him.
Rapp was now at the window. It had taken less than a second for him to fire the shot and get to the door. The man’s hands were up shielding his face, and the glass was still tumbling from his lap to the floor of the car. Rapp reached in with his right hand and grabbed the man’s wrist. Rapp’s pistol was still in his left hand and he reached in to smack the man with the butt end of the grip. He aimed for the man’s temple. Just before the hard metal made contact the man yelled, and then his body went limp from the sharp blow.
Quickly, Rapp unlocked the door and opened it. He immediately removed the man’s gun from his hip holster, and threw it into the backseat as he continued his search. While looking for a backup weapon it occurred to him that he’d almost missed something. He’d been breathing so hard, and the adrenaline was coursing through his veins so fast, that it didn’t register what the man had yelled, and more importantly, what language he had yelled it in. The man had sworn in Hebrew.
ROSENTHAL’S PISTOL WAS trained on the woman. He slowly approached her from his corner of the room. She was on her butt, her body limp and leaning against the side of the chair. Her pistol was a good eight feet away sitting in the middle of the hardwood floor. Rosenthal was pretty sure she was dead. He’d hit her once in the shoulder and then in the head. He’d put one more in her just to make sure.
With his gun still aimed at her he called for his partner through clenched lips, “Jordan.” There was no answer. “Jordan, can you hear me? Are you all right?”
Rosenthal tried to make sense of what had just happened. How had she known they were waiting for her? What had he done wrong? How would he explain to the colonel that he had lost Jordan Sunberg? Rosenthal was pondering these questions when out of nowhere came a loud noise over his earpiece and then the voice of David Yanta swearing in Hebrew. Rosenthal stopped dead in his tracks. Yanta was a professional, and knew that under no circumstances were they ever to speak in their native tongue while on a mission. For him to make such a mistake someone had to have surprised him. Rosenthal had lost one man and maybe two. He was jolted by the horrible sinking feeling of going from the hunter to the hunted in just seconds. With one hand on his lip mike and the other holding his gun he began to call in earnest for Yanta to check in.
DONATELLA HAD LANDED on h
er butt. She was leaning against the chair with one of her legs bent under her. Her shoulder hadn’t begun to throb yet. It was too early for that, but she felt a stinging sensation on the back of her scalp. One of the shots must have grazed her. Her head was tilted down, her chin resting on her chest. She looked dead, or at the least, unconscious. She didn’t dare move, not without her pistol. The man would have to come closer.
With her hair hanging down in front of her face she cracked her eyes ever so slightly. She looked for her Walther, but it was nowhere in sight. She heard the man’s steps as he approached her. She’d have to act dead. Donatella tried to discern if there were any more of them. The man called out someone’s name, but there was no response. That must have been the one she’d killed with the headshot.
Donatella took a quick inventory of her body. Her right arm was useless, but she still had both her legs and her left hand, which was thankfully still holding on to the knife. The man would not be able to see the weapon since she held the blade flat against her forearm.
The man took another step forward. “David, come in. Can you hear me?”
He was checking with his partner on the street. That was good; he was distracted. The shoes came another step closer and the man was standing right in front of her. Through her hair she could see the gun that was pointed at her head. Donatella knew what she had to do. She jerked her head away from the gun and brought her left hand up at the same time. The razor sharp blade sliced through the flesh and tendons of the man’s wrist. The silenced gun thudded to the floor before a shot could be fired.
Donatella’s next move was a vicious kick that just barely caught the man’s groin, but nonetheless sent him retreating across the room. In that fleeting moment Donatella abandoned the knife and lunged for the man’s gun. The man realized his mistake and stopped his retreat. With his life in the balance, he stepped forward and dove for the gun. Donatella beat him to it by less than a second. She grabbed the gun with her left hand just as he landed on top of her. The force of him hitting her sent them skidding across the hardwood floor. It was her good arm against his good arm.
Donatella wrestled to get free and Rosenthal struggled to keep her down. She was on her back, and he was on top of her. He was stronger and had the leverage. The gun started to move closer to Donatella’s head. Her brain sent signals to her wounded right arm to do something. With incredible effort it began to twitch. Donatella felt herself losing her grip on the pistol and she lashed out.
The man’s head was just above her. She opened her mouth wide, lifted her head off the floor and bit down as hard as she could. After just a second she could taste the warm salty blood of the man’s right ear dripping into her mouth. The man growled in pain, but did not release his grip. Donatella kept her jaw locked and started shaking her head violently. In her teeth she could feel the ear tearing away from the man’s head. His groan turned into an all out scream, but his grip stayed firm.
The thought occurred to Donatella again that she was going to die, that this man was too tough for her. It was this feeling of absolute desperation that caused her right arm to move, and when it did it bumped into a familiar object. Donatella closed her eyes, as her fingertips searched the familiar shape. After what seemed like an eternity she had it in her hand. With agonizing pain she picked it up and released her bite on the man’s ear.
His head snapped around, his ear barely still attached, flapping loosely down by his neck. He looked at her with absolute rage in his eyes. Her sweaty left hand lost the battle over his gun and he twisted it from her grip. Any feeling of accomplishment or celebration that he might have felt was short-lived. Donatella stuck her silenced Walther .22 against the bloody spot where the man’s ear should have been and pulled the trigger. Rosenthal’s head jerked violently, his eyes opened wide with the horror of what had just happened and then his whole body went limp. Donatella did not have the strength to move. She just lay there, covered by the body of the man she’d killed.
24
FOUR SEASONS HOTEL, MILAN, THURSDAY EVENING
Anna felt a little off kilter. She’d woken on her own at five past nine, a little surprised to find that Mitch hadn’t returned. Not overly alarmed, she went into the bathroom and stepped into the shower. Mitch had said he had some business to take care of, but that he’d be back around eight to take her to dinner. Anna stood in the marble shower and let the warm water bring her back to life. She tried to figure out what time it was in Washington, and if she’d just taken a long nap or had a short night’s sleep. She wasn’t awake enough yet to figure it out, so she gave up after a couple of weak attempts. She was in Italy to enjoy life and hopefully to start a new one. Time didn’t matter for the next six days. She would sleep when she wanted to sleep, she would eat when she wanted to eat and she would have sex often.
By the time she got out of the shower she’d gone back on her first promise. She toweled herself off and squinted at the clock sitting on the nightstand in the other room. It was 9:20 and despite what she’d just told herself, time mattered. Her job was a series of deadlines, and they were deadlines you couldn’t miss. When Tom Brokaw tossed it to you in the middle of the nightly news you were live in front of millions of people. Deadlines were there to be kept. It had been pounded into her psyche from day one of her first journalism course at the University of Michigan.
Professionally she was good at keeping deadlines, but personally she struggled. This was a source of great irritation between her and Mitch. For very real reasons, he was a worrier. He was rarely late, and when he was, he called. She was constantly late for everything but the news and it drove Mitch nuts. The talons of fear began clawing at her. She was getting a taste of what he felt. It would be one thing if Mitch was just another tourist, but he wasn’t.
Standing in front of the mirror she began applying lotion to her skin. She worked her way from top to bottom, rubbing the lotion in more vigorously as she went. By the time she reached her feet she was mad. She was mad at Mitch for being late, and she was mad at herself for allowing herself to get upset. She kept telling herself to relax, but it didn’t work. To help pass the time she got dressed. She had no idea where they were going to dinner so she put on a nice pair of dress pants, a white camisole and a sheer gray blouse. With that done the clock was quickly approaching 10:00.
With few other options she opened the mini bar and made herself a vodka tonic. Anna alternated between sitting and sipping her drink and walking out onto the balcony and sipping her drink. The Four Seasons had a beautiful courtyard. From the room’s balcony she could look down at the people dining on the terrace of the hotel’s restaurant. They sat under white umbrellas and dined by candlelight. A young couple, about her age, began dancing to the music of a string quartet. It was all very romantic and it depressed her. She went back inside and poured herself another drink, a stiff one.
She sat down in front of the TV and turned it on. She stared at the screen but it didn’t really register. Her mind was off and running, trying to solve bigger problems, trying to decide if maybe she was making the wrong decision. Why would any woman want to live the rest of her life with so much stress?
The doubt sneaked up on her, and she began asking herself just what in the hell she was thinking when she’d allowed herself to fall in love with Mitch Rapp. There were a lot of obvious reasons. He was an incredibly gentle and sensitive man, especially considering what he did for a living. He was, without exaggeration, the sexiest man she’d ever known. His rugged good looks were backed up by a confidence and intellect that feared nothing. He was a lover like no one she had ever experienced. When they went to bed it felt as if their bodies were made to be with each other. And he had saved her life and countless others. She could place no value on that. He was a phenomenal person, but he had his faults, or more precisely, he had one major fault.
Rielly knew what it was like to grow up in a home where you worried if a loved one might not return after a day’s work, or if the next knock on the door might be
your father’s best friend coming to tell the family that Dad had given his life in the line of duty. Rielly’s father had just retired from the Chicago Police Department after thirty years. As a little girl she vividly remembered lying awake at night hearing sirens and worrying that Daddy wouldn’t come home, crying as she thought of never seeing him again. Her parents did their best to protect her and her brothers from the fears, but they were unavoidable. Chicago was a big city and with it came some pretty rough crime and with that came dead cops. They saw it on TV, they saw it in the papers, and the nuns made them pray for the deceased officers and their families at St. Ann’s, her Catholic grade school. It was not a nice part of her childhood.
Anna loved her father dearly. He and her mother had done a wonderful job raising her and her brothers. Two of those brothers had followed in their father’s footsteps and were now patrolmen with the Chicago PD and the other brother, the black sheep, was an attorney.
Anna had always told herself she’d never marry a cop. Despite the fact that her mother and father had made it, she’d seen enough of her father’s friends to know the stress from their jobs more often than not made marriage a failed venture. And Mitch’s job, if that’s what she could call it, was ten times worse. Cops were meant to keep the peace and enforce the law. Occasionally they had to draw their weapon, but rarely did they have to shoot someone. If they did it was usually because someone was shooting at them. During these dark moments of doubt, Anna was forced to admit who Mitch Rapp really was. He was an assassin. When he went to work he went with the intent to kill. He didn’t wait for anyone to shoot first, he went with his gun cocked and drawn.