by Vince Flynn
He didn’t move at all as Rapp took one end of the stretcher and started siding it out of the aircraft. Shouts became audible from behind and a moment later he was enveloped by one of the C-17’s medical teams. A moment later they had Coleman on a two-wheeled gurney and were rushing him back to the plane. A nurse in desert camo was straddling him, pulling off his bandages and checking for a carotid pulse. Another was running alongside, cutting through Coleman’s pants leg with a pair of scissors.
One of the corpsmen lagged and Rapp grabbed him by the back of the collar, jerking him to a stop.
“We need one more gurney.”
“Sir?” the kid said, eyes widening. “We were told one injured man.”
He had the look of a new recruit. Smart and well trained, but not yet certain of his role in this shit storm.
“Just get me the gurney,” Rapp said.
“We have another team. I’ll—”
“Stop talking and listen to me. Don’t get another team. Don’t ask for help or tell anyone what you’re doing. Just get me the fucking gurney. Is that clear?”
The man was understandably scared and confused, but nodded.
“You have one minute.”
When he started to run, Rapp pushed himself back into the chopper and pointed to the nuke. “Let’s get it out of here.”
It took some wrestling, but they managed to drag the warhead to the doors just as the corpsman reappeared. He took a hesitant step backward when he saw his new patient and then another when they rolled it into a position where the radiation hazard symbol was visible.
“Sir? We’re authorized to pick up three men. One injured. No one told me anything about . . .” His voice faded for a moment. “About anything else.”
“I’m telling you about it now,” Rapp said, pushing the gurney to the edge of the chopper’s door. Maslick and the copilot put their shoulders to the warhead and gave it one last shove. The gurney’s tires bulged when the weapon landed, but everything held together. Rapp threw a blanket over it before pointing at Maslick and then to the Globemaster. The former Delta operator jumped out and helped the corpsman push the warhead toward the open cargo hold.
Rapp slapped an open palm loudly against the side of the chopper and leaned inside. “Get out of here, Fred. And like always, forget any of this ever happened.”
“That’ll be a pleasure,” the pilot said, flipping a few switches above him. “Tell Scott we’re pulling for him.”
Rapp jogged toward the plane as the dust kicked up and the helicopter started rising into a darkening sky. The C-17’s four jet engines were already spooling and the cargo bay door was on its way up. Rapp grabbed its edge and flipped himself onto it, rolling to his feet inside.
He ignored Maslick and the corpsman trying to strap the nuke into a bunk and walked forward. There was a dividing wall near the front and he skirted around it before stopping at its edge. Coleman had five people working on him. IVs and oxygen were in place and his clothes were gone. Bloody rags that had been used to clean him up enough to search for hidden wounds were piled on the floor.
Rapp wasn’t sure how long he watched. How long he listened to the voices go from commanding to desperate and back again. The details of what they were doing, the meaning of what they were saying, was lost on him.
A scalpel flashed in the overhead lights and Rapp saw it slide between Coleman’s ribs. He just lay there like a piece of meat.
“Mitch?”
Rapp ignored the voice behind him and continued to watch the medical team work on his friend.
“Mitch? Dr. Kennedy is on the phone for you.”
Rapp turned slowly toward Maslick, who was sheepishly holding out a satphone.
Instead of taking it, he grabbed the man by the throat and drove him back into the fuselage. “I told you to get that nuke out of there! Were my orders not clear or are you just too stupid to understand them?”
“I’m sorry,” Maslick managed to get out past the pressure on his windpipe. “Dr. Kennedy overrode you. She sent us back.”
Rapp could hear her tinny voice shouting unintelligibly from the phone lying at his feet. The plane started to taxi and he finally released Maslick, shoving him toward the back of the plane. The former soldier retreated unsteadily as Rapp scooped up the handset.
“Mitch!” Kennedy said. “Are you there? Mitch!”
“I’m here.”
“Joe went back on my express orders. He tried to talk me out of it.”
“Not smart, Irene. The cops were moving in and we had no idea what their capabilities were. They could have taken down Fred’s bird.”
“There was no other option. I contacted President Chutani but he said there was nothing he could do to pull them back. General Shirani wouldn’t even take my call.”
“Then you should have left us.”
“I guarantee you that Shirani was going to force a fight. Video of you gunning down a bunch of soldiers before getting taken out by an RPG is just what he needs to stoke Pakistan’s anti-American elements. It might have been enough to turn the tide against the civilian government.”
She was probably right, Rapp knew. Her grasp of the intricate power struggles from Washington to Beijing to Islamabad was second to none. The nuke was safe, he was alive, and Coleman was in the hands of the best combat trauma people in the world. It didn’t help, though. His anger just kept building.
“So this was about Pakistan, not about me and Scott.”
“Of course,” she said, not bothering even to try to be convincing. “I consider both of you completely expendable.”
• • •
The plane’s wheels touched down and the engines roared as the massive aircraft came to a stop. Rapp didn’t move from his position on a cot bolted to the fuselage. He watched silently as Coleman, utterly still and surrounded by his medical team, was wheeled out the back.
It wasn’t their planned stop in Europe. The docs had told him that Coleman wasn’t going to survive long enough to get there. This U.S. air base in Afghanistan was the closest thing that had the surgical capabilities they needed.
He continued to sit, staring at the wall in front of him, until an air force colonel came stalking up the open loading bay.
“Who’s in charge here?”
When Rapp didn’t react, Maslick subtly pointed.
“Who the hell are you?” the man said, putting his hands on his hips and positioning himself in front of Rapp. “I got a call saying that a plane was coming in with a medical emergency. Nothing about on whose authority, where it was from, who was on—”
He suddenly fell silent and it was obvious why. The blanket had slipped off the nuke strapped into a bunk to his left.
“What the hell did you bring onto my base?”
“Nothing you need to worry about,” Rapp said finally. “You just need to make sure my man gets the best care available and call me in a fast transport to the U.S.”
With an expression of disgust, the officer examined Rapp’s filthy clothing, long hair, and thick beard. “CIA,” he spat. “Fuck you. You don’t walk onto my base and start giving orders.”
“Look, Colonel. I’m bone tired and we both know I’m going to get what I want. Why not just skip straight to that part?”
“You have confidence, I’ll give you that. Exactly why is it you think you’re going to get what you want?”
“Because I have a nuke.”
The man’s eyes shot toward the warhead again. “But where did you get it and where are you going with it? Because you’re not getting me involved in some bullshit CIA operation without authorization.”
It worried Rapp that he was actually thinking about killing the man. And not in some vague, theoretical way. He had his eye on a large wrench stowed against the fuselage and was picturing beating the officer’s skull in with it.
“Okay, Colonel,” he said, reluctantly abandoning the idea. “Then let’s get you authorization.”
He smirked. “What? From Irene Kennedy? I do
n’t work for her.”
The anger flashed across Rapp’s face and Maslick inched closer, putting himself in position for an intercept. The Delta man tensed when Rapp reached behind him, but then relaxed when nothing more deadly than a phone appeared.
“Would the president be good enough?”
“My ass,” the man said. “You Agency pricks are all the same. You swagger around and bullshit about how the White House hangs on your every word. I’ve been around way too long to fall for that.”
Rapp switched his phone to speaker and dialed a number that went to a private switchboard at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
“White House. How can I help you?”
“Could you put me through to the Oval Office, please?”
“Connecting you now.”
The still-unnamed air force colonel started to look a little uncertain.
“Oval Office.”
“Gloria, it’s Mitch. Is he available?”
“He’s meeting with the vice president right now. Do you want me to poke my head in?”
Rapp looked inquisitively at the man in front of him, who shook his head violently.
“No, it’s not that important.”
“Should he call you when he’s out?”
Again, Rapp looked up and again he got a vigorous shake of the head.
“No, I’ll just catch up with him when I get back. Thanks.”
By the time he disconnected the call, the anonymous colonel was already headed for the exit.
“Fast transport,” Rapp called after him.
“I’ll find the closest one and get it in the air,” he responded without looking back. A moment later he had disappeared down the tarmac.
“Helpful guy,” Maslick said.
Rapp stood. “Lock this plane down. No one gets on or off until we’re ready to transfer that nuke. I’ll be back in twenty.”
• • •
Rapp hated the smell of hospitals. It was a stale antiseptic stench that he’d come to associate with failure and loss. He walked up to a large reception desk and looked over it at a woman in a crisp air force uniform. “Excuse me, ma’am. One of my men just came in here.”
Her eyebrows rose a bit. “Are you the guy running our CO ragged?”
News had a way of moving quickly on military bases. “Yeah.”
“Congratulations. No one knew he could move that fast,” she said, sliding a clipboard toward him. “Your man didn’t have any tags or a name. Could you give us his information?”
“Sure,” Rapp said. “How is he?”
“They’ve taken him into surgery.”
“With respect, ma’am, that’s not what I asked.”
“I know.”
Rapp nodded his understanding and picked up the clipboard. “Is there somewhere I can fill this out? Somewhere private?”
“We’ve got a little chapel down the hall on the right. Nothing fancy but I don’t think anyone’s in there.”
He followed her directions, pushing through a set of double doors before dropping the clipboard in a trash can and dialing Irene Kennedy.
He thought about the deaths of his wife and unborn child. About his brother, whom he hadn’t seen in more than a year. About his old friend Stan Hurley bleeding out in his arms only a few weeks ago.
And now Scott.
The line began to ring and Kennedy picked up almost immediately. “How is he?”
“Not good. He’s in surgery.”
“And the warhead?”
“Joe’s watching it. I’ve ordered up a transport.”
“You’re still planning on bringing it here?”
“We’ve been wanting to get a look at Pakistani nuclear technology for a long time. This might be our only chance.”
She didn’t respond.
“You disagree?”
“No, but I’m getting a lot of pushback from the Pakistanis. They know we have it and they want it back.”
“Call Chutani.”
“He’s one of the ones pushing back.”
“Bullshit. He’d be dead if it weren’t for me and that nuke would be in the back of a van with a bunch of terrorists.”
“Still, he’s the president of Pakistan and he’s trying to hold on to power. Shirani can use this against him.”
“Then stall. It’s not like we need it for a month. I’ll deliver it to Craig and tell him his tech guys have twenty-four hours to learn everything he can.”
“This isn’t like snatching some mid-level ISI operative or hacking into one of their computers, Mitch. This is a nuclear weapon. What do I tell them?”
“That it’s a holiday weekend. That my plane ran out of gas. Or maybe that if they don’t want us to take them, they shouldn’t drive them around in fucking fruit trucks.”
“I’ve briefed President Alexander and he’s given his authorization, but he asked some questions that I had a hard time answering. We know they have nukes. We know they work. How much are the details worth to us?”
Rapp let out a long breath. “There’s something not right here, Irene. Something we don’t understand.”
“What makes you say that?”
“A Russian mobster working with ISIS, for one. Why?”
“To get you out of the way so they could get their hands on a nuke. With Saddam Hussein’s former generals starting to take charge, ISIS tactics are getting more sophisticated. They have money and it’s not hard to believe that they’d use it to hire outside contractors.”
“But our information was that the people looking to snatch this nuke weren’t ISIS. They were al Badr. The two groups aren’t really connected.”
“Agreed.”
“And then there’s what happened to Scott.”
“What did happen? Was he ambushed?”
“Not in the way you’re thinking. It was one guy.”
“One man? Are you sure?”
Rapp dropped onto a bench. “I’m sure. And this guy went through Scott like he wasn’t there.”
“That doesn’t seem possible.”
“I’d say the same thing if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
“Did you get a good look at him?”
“Marginal.”
“And?”
“White guy around my size. Dark hair. Mid-thirties. Medium complexion.”
“You didn’t recognize him?”
“Nope.”
She fell silent for a moment, considering what she was being told. The number of people who could hope to even survive a confrontation with Scott Coleman was incredibly small. But to do it easily? If there was someone like that out there, how could Mitch Rapp have never run across him?
“Look, Irene. A guy like this doesn’t work for the Mob and he doesn’t take contracts from a bunch of half-assed terrorists. In fact, he doesn’t contract himself out at all or I’d have heard of him.”
“But you think he’s important.”
“My gut says that if we can find him, we’ll have the key to this thing.”
“The key? Or a target for revenge?”
Rapp ignored her question. “I figure there’s a seventy-five percent chance that he came up through a solid spec ops program. So, probably European. And since the Russians seem to have their fingerprints all over this thing, I’d start there.”
“What about the other twenty-five percent?”
“He could have been trained by the ops side of one of the intelligence agencies like I was.”
“That’s not a lot to go on, Mitch. Elite white soldiers in their thirties casts a pretty wide net.”
“One more thing to add to his profile, Irene. This guy’s an athlete. Maybe he stopped competing when he was young, but at some point, people noticed him.”
“So, gifted white male teens playing some sport in some country. Not that helpful.”
“Yeah, but again, we know that the Russians are involved. So I’d start with the former Soviet athletics program. Records still exist and people who worked in it are still alive. Maybe we�
��ll get lucky.”
CHAPTER 21
ABOVE SOUTHWESTERN VIRGINIA
U.S.A.
“WE’RE on our final approach,” Rapp said into his headset. “Could you give us runway lights?”
No response. They were coming in between two heavily wooded mountains, the outlines of which were barely visible in glow of the moon. The colonel whose name Rapp still didn’t know had managed to scrounge up one of the Air Force’s Gulfstream IIIs but, ironically, pilots had been in short supply. That left Rapp and his rusty flying skills in the right seat.
“I repeat. We are on our—”
“I can’t find the fucking switch,” a familiar voice interrupted. “Hang on. I think it’s behind this bush. Yeah, I’ve got it.”
Two rows of lights appeared to the north, outlining a runway that had been used probably no more than ten times since the Cold War. The pilot banked toward it and steepened their descent.
“Some genius,” Rapp said into the mike hanging in front of his mouth.
“What, I’m an electrician, now?”
“We’ll be on the ground in two. Try not to touch anything else until then. I’d rather not put this thing into the trees.”
“No problemo, man.”
Rapp glanced back into the cabin. The luxurious seats he was used to in the CIA’s G550 were conspicuously absent, replaced with a few frame-and-canvas benches bolted to the rear bulkhead. Joe Maslick had piled some blankets and cushions next to the warhead and was sound asleep with his head propped against the nosecone.
“Mas! Get your ass up. We’re landing.”
The former Delta operator jerked awake.
“Is that thing secure? We don’t need it chasing us around in here when we touch down.”
“We’re good,” he grumbled. “But there are better things to wake up next to.”
Rapp faced forward again and watched the approaching lights. Surprisingly, Maslick’s comment made him think of Claudia Gould. He tried to shake it off by telling himself that any relationship between them was doomed, but her image wasn’t so easily dismissed.