by Vince Flynn
He turned on the faucet and used it to fill the gun’s integrated silencer with water. Despite the opulence of the room, the walls were a bit thin. The first shot from a suppressed weapon tended to be somewhat loud and wetting it would reduce the effect.
Azarov hadn’t been paying attention to Postan’s words but the sudden silence when he raised the weapon was still welcome. The man froze for a moment and then bolted for the door. Azarov tracked him over elevated sights, waiting until he was off the rug and over the easier-to-clean marble before firing.
The subsonic round struck the base of his skull and he pitched forward, landing face-first on the floor. Azarov laid the weapon on the bar and grabbed a trash bag from the can at his feet.
He put it over Postan’s head and tied it tightly around his neck, partially to keep the mess to a minimum, but also to make sure he was dead. The .22 he’d used was extremely quiet, but lacked impact.
A little scrubbing with a bar towel wetted with ice finished the job. He retreated back to the sofa and had barely managed to skim though the contents of the flash drive before his phone rang.
“Yes.”
“Can I assume that you’ve had your meeting and that it ended as I requested?” Maxim Krupin’s voice.
“You can.”
“And you’ve reviewed the information I sent?”
“Only in a very cursory way, sir.”
“I, on the other hand, have gone through it in great detail.”
That was undoubtedly meant to be more confidence inspiring than it actually was. Krupin was a genius at political backstabbing but had no real operational experience. He’d embellished the handful of years he’d spent with the KGB into something straight out of an American adventure film but the reality was quite different. He’d been responsible for spying on political dissidents and very occasionally ordering the assassination of a young idealist or aging political agitator. His understanding of men like Mitch Rapp was nonexistent.
“I think you’ll be quite satisfied with the plan, Grisha.”
Azarov took a slow sip of his bourbon, savoring the flavor while he calculated how much to say. “I’m concerned about working with Pakistani Taliban while Rapp will be supported by Scott Coleman and his men.”
“The Taliban have strong local knowledge and are willing to give their lives to ensure that you accomplish your goal.”
“I think we can be certain that Coleman’s people will be reasonably knowledgeable about their operating environment as well. And I suspect that there isn’t one of them who wouldn’t lay down his life for a teammate. Further, they’re extraordinarily well trained, speak the same language as Rapp, and have a lengthy history of carrying out successful operations with him.”
“I selected these men personally,” Krupin said, the anger starting to creep into his voice. “Not only for their skill but for their commitment to the mission.”
It was, of course, a complete lie. Krupin had selected these men because they couldn’t be traced back to him. Their skill or lack thereof was a secondary consideration at best.
“Thank you for involving yourself personally,” Azarov said, knowing that there was nothing to be gained from further discussion. “I understand the demands on your time.”
“Not at all, Grisha. I have no priorities more important than your well-being. Other than perhaps your happiness. You continue to demonstrate your value. How can I express my appreciation?”
It was a question that had been asked many times during their relationship, but one that was becoming increasingly difficult to answer. Another car? He had a Bugatti Veyron sitting in storage in Canada and a Bentley Continental in a garage outside Geneva, to name only a few. Another house? He had four—three of which he hadn’t visited in years. The only thing he wanted was the one thing he would never be granted. Freedom.
“That’s very generous of you, sir. Please give me time to consider the offer.”
“Of course.”
The line went dead and Azarov set his phone down, staring at the body lying near the door.
In a way, he envied Krupin and men like him. They were blessed with insatiable appetites that had to be constantly fed. Money, power, possessions, women. It would never be enough. A billion euros would have to become two billion. The adulation and obedience of ninety percent of the population would have to grow to one hundred percent. Krupin and the oligarchs would scrape and strive until their last breath, never knowing a moment’s doubt, introspection, or regret. Never considering there were aspects of life that existed outside their simple philosophy of more.
For a long time, Azarov had felt like he was drowning. Not the panicked, desperate death that most people would associate with that kind of end, though. More a sense of waves lapping over him and of a cold, endless darkness below. The road ahead was empty. He had nothing he wanted. Nothing worth fighting for.
Now, though, there was the strange sensation of adrenaline leaking into him. Soon, he would face Mitch Rapp, a man he had spent his adult life actively avoiding. There had never been any reason to court a confrontation, but now that it was inevitable he was starting to feel . . . what? Excitement? Fear? Those were clumsy words that had little meaning to him. But he felt something. Something to break up—or perhaps end—the existence he’d become trapped in.
CHAPTER 10
FAISALABAD
PAKISTAN
RAPP didn’t bother lowering the jet’s stairs, instead jumping to the tarmac and jogging toward a car parked at the edge of the runway. The clear skies and cool breezes of the Western Cape were now thousands of miles away, replaced by Pakistan’s familiar heat and yellow haze.
His flight plan had been for Islamabad, but they’d been diverted one hundred fifty miles south to Faisalabad without explanation. Based on the blond hair barely visible through the filthy windshield of a Honda Civic waiting for him, the news wasn’t good. Scott Coleman was a former Navy SEAL and the principal in SEAL Demolition and Salvage, a private outfit that existed largely as backup for Rapp in ops that were best left off the books.
“Hot enough for you?” Coleman said as Rapp slid into the passenger seat. “The weather guys say we’re going to break a hundred and eight this afternoon.”
They weren’t normally prone to talking about the weather, but those kinds of numbers had to be accounted for when planning operations. At best, speed, stamina, and precision would be compromised. At worst, heat stroke and dehydration could take out even an experienced desert operative.
“Did someone demote you to chauffeur and not tell me about it?” Rapp said, turning one of the car’s AC vents on him as they accelerated toward the main road. He’d left Coleman in charge and had expected to be picked up by one of the CIA’s local staff.
“We’ve got good intel that a nuke is going to be coming through town in a few hours and that al Badr is going to make a play for it.”
“Not ISIS?”
“ISIS? No, why?”
“No reason,” Rapp said. “But why al Badr? They’re a second-string Kashmiri outfit. What are they doing in Faisalabad?”
“Hell if I know. I’m telling you, Mitch, it just keeps getting worse. Pakistan’s got a thousand terrorist groups and I swear every one of them has their eye on the nukes the army’s driving around. If someone doesn’t get control of this chickenshit government fast, we’re going to lose one.”
He and Coleman had been in some hairy situations over the years, but this was about as agitated as Rapp had ever seen the man.
Not that he didn’t agree. Pakistan was a fractured nation with almost two hundred million inhabitants and a stockpile of more than a hundred nuclear warheads—many of which were currently in motion. A screwup didn’t mean getting your ass shot off, it meant watching a million people disappear into a mushroom cloud. Just the kind of large-scale problem Rapp had spent his career seeking out and Coleman had spent his career trying to avoid.
“Who fed us the intel?”
“Redstone.”
“If we get involved, are we going to run headlong into an ISI operation?” Rapp asked, referring to Inter-Services Intelligence—Pakistan’s version of the CIA.
“I don’t think so,” Coleman responded. “According to Redstone, you killing the ISI’s director has completely paralyzed them. Everybody’s jockeying for position and playing both sides of the power struggle going on between General Shirani and the president. The fact that someone could wander off with one of their nukes is so low priority to them it barely makes their radar.”
“How many are we tracking now?”
“Thirteen warheads that we know of are currently on the move. We located another two stationary ones while you were gone, putting the total we have a handle on at fifty-three. The analysts are guessing that another twenty-five are attached to missile systems that would make them impractical to move.”
Rapp did some quick math in his head. “So that leaves somewhere in the ballpark of thirty unaccounted for.”
Coleman nodded. “Including the one we’re talking about now. We weren’t aware of it until Redstone tipped us off.”
It was a problem that had existed for years. The Pakistani army was paranoid about the Americans or Indians getting a bead on their nuclear arsenal, so they moved it around—on trucks, in train cars, in the trunks of private automobiles. Hell, there was credible intel that a tactical warhead had once been hauled three hundred miles on the back of a motorcycle.
It had always been an incredibly dangerous situation, but one that the Pakistani army kept more or less under control. The transfers were carefully coordinated and, even more important, the weapons were always partially disassembled and transported as individual parts that couldn’t be used to create a nuclear explosion.
So, on any given day, you could count on the fact that one or two nukes were making their way around the country monitored by an army division set up for just that purpose. Now that stupid—but reasonably well run—program was in chaos. Fully functional weapons were being haphazardly passed around by low-level officers and, in two confirmed cases, civilians. One warhead they were watching was currently parked in a retired captain’s storage unit. A recon team had managed to get a fiber optic camera through the ventilation grate and the Agency was now in possession of an honest-to-God picture of a hot nuke sitting next to a set of golf clubs. At this point, the chances of the situation spiraling out of control was almost a hundred percent.
“This is us,” Coleman said, cutting into an alley. He dialed a code into his phone and a rusted cargo door slid open in front of them. There were three motocross bikes in the bay and Rapp stepped out of the vehicle as they nosed up to them. The door began to close again and a moment later they were standing in the gloom provided by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling.
“The roads are a little narrower than Islamabad’s and the traffic’s about the same as Lahore. So, not knowing how fast we’re going to have to move or exactly where this is going to go down, I figured bikes would be our best bet.”
Joe Maslick, one of Coleman’s top men, leaned his considerable bulk through a door to Rapp’s right. His hand came off the weapon beneath his sweat-soaked shirt when he confirmed their identities.
“What’s the situation?” Rapp said, following the man into the next room.
The building looked like it had at one time housed some kind of convenience store, and it was still lined with empty shelves and counters. The large front windows had been blacked out, with the only illumination coming from places where the paint had gotten scraped off.
“We’ve got cameras on buildings at all the major entrances to town. Our manpower is limited but we have people physically covering some of the others. Keep in mind that most aren’t fighters. We scraped them up from wherever we could.”
“Choppers?”
“One on standby.”
“Anything new from Redstone?” Coleman asked.
“Yeah. He says we’re looking for a produce truck.”
“Do we have a description?” Rapp said.
“Better. We’ve got a plate number. I’ve texted it to all our people.”
“Any intel on where al Badr is going to make its move?”
“No. But we have a few educated guesses.” He motioned Rapp over to a large satellite photo spread out on the floor. The light was just good enough to make out detail.
“The fact that it’s a truck helps us. A lot of the streets are too narrow for it to fit through, so we can rule them out.” He used a car antenna he’d found on the floor as a pointer. “We’ve got guys on roofs here, here, and here. Obviously, they’re spread out but because the buildings are packed in so tight, they’re actually pretty mobile. The concentric circles around their positions represent one minute of travel time each.”
“What about Pakistani soldiers?” Rapp said.
“Police and military are stationed on most of the larger plazas and major intersections,” Coleman responded. “All this political turmoil is causing a fair amount of civil unrest. The presence isn’t heavy, though. Just a show of force to keep people in line.”
“Do they know we’re here?”
“The army and the cops? No, and that’s the way we want it in this town. Both the general in charge and the chief of police are playing for their own accounts. We considered paying them off, but neither is reliable or competent enough to bother with. They’re just covering their asses and waiting to see whether the army or the government comes out of this on top.”
“So we can’t count on them to help us?”
“Definitely not. More likely they’re going to get in our way.”
A walkie-talkie lying on the floor suddenly crackled to life. “Spotter eight to base. Come in, base.”
Maslick snatched it up and pointed to the number 8 scrawled on the map in red. “This is base. What have you got?”
“I have eyes on the target. Heading northeast on Okara near where it changes names. Traffic is heavy. I think I can keep up on foot.”
Maslick glanced at Rapp, who gave a short nod. “Do it. And let us know if he turns off that road.”
Coleman was already going for the bikes, dragging a box of a gear out from behind them. Rapp followed while Maslick notified their chopper pilot that he needed to be warming up his bird.
The flak jackets were a nonstarter, as were the leather pants and jackets. It was just too hot and there was a good chance this could devolve into a running fight. Rapp slipped a tan-colored climbing harness over his khaki cargo pants and untucked his shirt to obscure it. A shoulder holster would be too visible so he ended up going with the setup he jogged with at home—a compact Glock 30 in a fanny pack.
Coleman was going with a larger weapon in a CamelBak and was forced to wear a full helmet to cover his blond hair and fair skin. Rapp had been threatening for years to pay one of Coleman’s contracts with a tanning bed and a shipping crate full of hair dye, but the former SEAL refused to take the hint.
“Comm check,” Rapp said, putting on a throat mike and inserting the earpiece.
“I’ve got you,” Coleman responded through the radio built into his helmet.
“Five by five,” Maslick said a moment later.
“I’m going to try to get behind them. Scott, you come down on them from the north.”
“Roger that. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
Rapp threw a leg over the closest bike and kicked it to life. The door began to open and when it got about four feet off the ground, he ducked and twisted the throttle, shooting out into the alley.
CHAPTER 11
“THE American scout has seen the truck and is following on foot.”
Grisha Azarov didn’t acknowledge the
voice coming over his earpiece, instead continuing to pace steadily across the abandoned manufacturing plant. Twenty-three meters. He calculated how long it would take him to run that section from a standing start and then moved on to a massive industrial machine that dominated one side of the shop floor.
“I repeat. The American scout has seen the truck and is following on foot.”
Azarov activated his mike as he paced off another portion of the building. “Understood. Authorize the driver to divert.”
He stopped and took in the space around him—the disused machines rusting at its edges, the remains of the glass-walled office at its center, the piles of refuse left over from the plant’s operations.
He didn’t know what had been made there or when production stopped. He didn’t know if the driver of the truck now headed inevitably his way was a Muslim fanatic, a trained operative, or an innocent transporter of fruits and vegetables. He was largely unfamiliar with the surrounding neighborhood, the flow of traffic at that time of day, and the strength of local law enforcement. He was forced to assume that these details had been sufficiently studied and to trust Krupin’s spotters to keep him apprised of the status of the man he would soon engage in a fight to the death.
Azarov walked to the base of a crane that rose to the ceiling, scanning along it before lowering his gaze to a group of Middle Eastern men huddled at the back of the building. Their precise purpose had not been shared with him beyond the fact that they were not there to back him up. Based on their number and equipment, it seemed obvious that they had been charged with unloading something from the truck that would soon arrive. And, while it had never been specifically discussed, there was little question that the item in question was one of the nuclear warheads being moved haphazardly around Pakistan.
Azarov could feel his heart pounding in his chest and the blood rushing in his ears. Normally, his heart rate barely rose during operations—the result of years of physical and psychological training. This was hardly a normal operation, though. The ISIS-supplied terrorists and lack of information introduced an intolerable lack of predictability. The potential presence of a nuclear warhead opened a scope far greater than he had dealt with in the past. And, finally, there was Mitch Rapp.