by Vince Flynn
Azarov had known her in a peripheral way for years, but paid no attention to her. He’d never looked into her background or had a conversation with her that didn’t involve some problem with his house or meaningless small talk about waves or the weather. He couldn’t. If Krupin knew how he felt about this twenty-nine-year-old Californian expat, it would have been her, and not Olga, bleeding into his mattress.
Azarov pointed to the cooler. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. They told me you needed a bunch of ice. Party or broken fridge?”
“The latter.”
“I could take a look at it.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It’s not problem,” she said, pushing past him into the kitchen. She put the cooler on the island and opened the refrigerator, crouching down to get a closer look.
He watched with calculated indifference as she poked her head inside.
“Seems fine. The light’s on and it feels cold.”
“It comes and goes.”
“Well, I wouldn’t eat any of this stuff, then,” she said, standing and turning toward him.
He made sure not to look at the way her shirt clung to her or the tantalizing strip of skin between the bottom of it and the top of her shorts.
“That’s good advice, Cara. Thank you.”
“Where’s Olga?”
“Russia.”
“Cool trip. When’s she coming back?”
“Probably never.”
“Oh,” she said, suddenly looking a bit uneasy. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
She thumbed toward the door. “You want the rest of the ice I brought? I feel like they told me way too much.”
“Sure. Just in case.”
He followed her out and she brushed a hand along his truck. “This thing must be faster than it looks. I could see you kicking up dust all the way from town.”
“Really? Interesting. It’s something I’ve never given thought to.”
Cara cocked her head inquisitively, but then just grabbed another cooler from the back of her Suzuki. He pulled out the last one and followed her back to the house.
She put the cooler down on the floor next to the dishwasher but didn’t make a move to leave.
“Thank you,” he said, not sure why she was just standing there. Did she know something? That Olga hadn’t left? Had she noticed someone lurking around the house? He assumed that Krupin had sent a lone female to kill Olga. Juan couldn’t be blamed for overlooking the presence of an unaccompanied eastern European woman on the local beaches.
“Hey, you know, since you’re . . . I mean, since your food’s probably bad, I’m getting together with some friends tonight at Patrón’s. You should come down and get a bite to eat. Maybe have a drink. You seem like you could use a few.”
“Thank you for the invitation, Cara, but I’ve been traveling for the last thirty hours and I think I’m just going to go to bed.”
“Yeah, I understand. Maybe some other time.”
“Maybe.”
She finally turned to leave and he watched her go, waiting until the sound of her car faded before he carried one of the coolers to the bathroom and emptied it into the tub. Krupin thought of everything.
Another ten minutes work and Olga was on ice. She’d keep until he figured out how to dispose of the body and mattress without running the risk of piquing anyone’s interest.
After cleaning the bedroom, he wanted nothing more than to lie in his hammock and drain a good bottle of bourbon. Instead, he stripped off his bloody clothes and put on a pair of running shorts. There were only two hours of daylight left, so he grabbed a headlamp from the shelf next to his running shoes.
Mitch Rapp was coming. Not today and probably not tomorrow. But soon.
CHAPTER 25
HIGHWAY 81
VIRGINIA
THERE were two more hours until sunrise and the dead-straight road was empty of taillights. Rapp was pushing Craig Bailer’s modified Corvette hard, but it seemed to be handling the stress with ease. The stereo had been replaced with controls for a fire suppression system mounted to the roll cage, so the only thing audible was the roar of the V8 and the slight whistle of aftermarket turbochargers. Joe Maslick’s bulky frame was crammed into a passenger seat that Bailer had jury-rigged specifically for this trip. Typically, he hadn’t said a word since they’d left.
The radar detector sounded, prompting Rapp to glance down at the vehicle’s speedometer. One hundred sixty miles per hour. In the rearview mirror he saw a police cruiser’s lights go on, already distant enough to be just a pinpoint. A moment later, they went dark again. He’d called in a number of favors and cleared the path to Walter Reed, where Scott Coleman was on life support. The Vette’s plate number had been given to Maryland and Virginia police, with instructions that under no circumstances was it to be pulled over.
Rapp tried to concentrate on the missing fissile material and how it tied back to Pakistan, but found it impossible. Scott Coleman had been at his side for almost his entire career. The former SEAL was patriotic, unwaveringly loyal, and courageous. But he was more than that. He was a man who somehow had never allowed himself to be sucked into the darkness that constantly swirled around him.
The death of Rapp’s mentor Stan Hurley was still a fresh wound but in many ways a different one. Hurley had been, first and foremost, a killer. A man filled with rage at the injustices of the world and consumed with visiting misery on the people who caused them. He’d died the way he wanted to—the way he had to: full of bullet holes, with his enemy bleeding from a fatal wound that he’d inflicted. For some reason, it wasn’t the future Rapp had seen for Coleman. More than any of them, he deserved something better.
He considered calling Kennedy for an update but immediately abandoned the idea. If Coleman was dead, Rapp wasn’t ready to hear the news. The thought of spending the next two hours crawling along at seventy miles an hour was for some reason unacceptable. At least now there was urgency. A goal to push for. Even if it turned out to be an illusion.
He felt a tap on his shoulder and glanced over to see Maslick pointing to the fuel gauge. Even at normal speeds, Bailer’s Vette wasn’t exactly economical. Being driven like this, it was going through gas like there was a hole in the tank.
“Five more miles on the right!” Maslick shouted over the roar of the engine. “The GPS is showing a station less than a quarter mile off the highway. We should be able to get in and out in under four minutes.”
• • •
The end of the whitewashed hallway had been cordoned off and was empty except for a lone man in a dark suit. One of Irene Kennedy’s security detail.
“Is he still alive?” Rapp said, skirting the barriers that had been set up.
“Last I heard, Mitch.”
Rapp wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Whether he wanted to see his friend struggling to cling to the last few moments of life or if he’d just rather see him gone. He told himself that it didn’t matter. Everyone ended up the same way eventually.
Kennedy appeared from a door to his right, wearing a meticulously pressed gray suit jacket and skirt, but looking tired. Her dark hair was pulled back, making the sadness on her face even more stark.
“I’m glad you made it.”
“Where is he?”
She led Rapp down the corridor to a transparent wall that looked in on one of the hospital’s intensive care units. With the bandages on his head and a respirator covering much of his face, Coleman was almost unrecognizable. A small patch of blond hair and an exposed arm full of needles were the only things left to identify one of America’s greatest and most loyal warriors.
Maslick stared through the glass for a few seconds and then just walked away, his broad shoulders sagging in a way that actually made the man look small. He’d lost his best friend, Mick Reavers, in a firefight only a few months ago. The price of America’s war on terrorism had begun to weigh heavily on
him.
Rapp saw motion in his peripheral vision and glanced right to see a figure approaching with two cups of coffee. For one of the few times in his life, he wasn’t able to hide his surprise.
Claudia Gould put down the cups and rushed forward, throwing her arms around him. “I’m so sorry about your friend, Mitch.”
He just stood there, unsure how to react. Kennedy watched carefully from a few feet away. There was no question that she was the one who had called Claudia. The two women had a long and complicated relationship that had only gotten stronger after Hurley had killed Claudia’s husband. But why bring her here now?
“I know how close you and Scott are,” she said, pulling away but keeping her gaze on him.
“Thanks,” he said, taking a hesitant step back.
“When we met again, I thought I would be telling you all about your house and the horrible amount of your money I’m spending. It seems stupid now.”
The strange thing was that he wanted to hear about the house. He wanted to go with her to see it and to listen to the endless details of how she’d chosen things he had no interest in at all.
“How’s Anna?”
“She misses her new home and her new friends, but Irene’s son has been spending time with her and she’s quite taken with him.”
“I’ll get the two of you back to the Cape, Claudia. I promise.”
“I know.”
The silence that followed dragged out until Kennedy reached for Rapp’s arm and gave it a gentle tug. “Could you excuse us for a few minutes, Claudia? I need to talk to Mitch.”
“Yes. Of course,” she said, suddenly looking a bit uncomfortable. “Should I . . . Should I stay here?”
“I’d appreciate that. Please let us know if there’s any change.”
Her discomfort was understandable. It seemed almost certain that at some point she’d created a dossier on Coleman. History, habits, address, family ties—all designed to give her husband an edge if he ever came up against the man. Now she found her world turned upside down. The people she had once spent time calculating out how to kill were now her protectors.
Rapp followed Kennedy down an empty hallway. “Any new information?”
“On Scott’s condition? No. He’s on intravenous antibiotics but the doctors don’t think they’ll work. They keep telling me he won’t make it another hour, but he keeps proving them wrong.”
They entered a break room and she took a seat in a plastic chair at its center. Rapp pushed the door closed, not speaking again until the latch clicked.
“What’s Claudia doing here?”
“I thought you could use a friendly face.”
“Are you trying to handle me, Irene?”
“We just lost Stan. And now this. I’m not trying to handle you, Mitch. I’m trying to help you keep perspective.”
“Have you talked to his mother yet?”
Kennedy shook her head. “Her dementia is worse than Scott let on. That’s the other reason Claudia’s here. He has no family other than his mother, and his close friends are all in Pakistan working for you. I can provide him with security but I can’t stay here for much longer. Claudia can.”
“What have you got on the guy who did this?” Rapp said, changing the subject.
“We’re still working on it.”
“I don’t want to hear that you’re working on it, Irene. I want to hear that you know who he is and where I can find him. If the people you have on this don’t start providing me some actionable intel, I’m going to come to Langley and crack some skulls.”
“I understand, Mitch. I do. But we have more pressing issues than revenge right now.”
“What issues?”
“We’ve ID’ed two of the men Scott killed. They weren’t al Badr. That was likely just a piece of misinformation to throw us off track. They were ISIS.”
“So you can identify two random Arab assholes but not one of the top professional killers on the planet?”
“It wasn’t hard. And one of them was British. Both of them had Facebook pages identifying themselves as members of ISIS and putting their area of operation as Iraq. I think we can be confident that the man who attacked Scott is less active on social media.”
Rapp walked to a soda machine in the corner. The change slot had been taped up so he slammed a hand into one of the buttons and was rewarded with a cold Coke. He would have preferred something stronger but had sworn off alcohol until he pulled his life together. Something that, at this rate, might take a while.
“Look, Mitch. We have to consider a few things.”
“What things?” he said, opening the can.
“First, the possibility that the fissile material in that weapon wasn’t the primary target. That it was just an ancillary benefit.”
“What was the target then?”
“You. Think about it. We get information from one of our most trusted informants leading us to an abandoned manufacturing plant where a highly trained assassin is waiting. The reasonable assumption would have been that you—not Scott—would be the one to enter the building. And that assumption would have been right if your motorcycle hadn’t broken down.”
“Yeah. The same thing occurred to me.”
“Whoever’s behind this wasn’t able to distract you in South Africa so they decided to get rid of you. That seems obvious. And unfortunately, the why of it also seems obvious.”
“Because their move against that warhead wasn’t a onetime thing. They want me out of the way so they can get more.”
She nodded. “Either warheads or fissile material. And if it’s the latter, they may already have it. How much of Pakistan’s arsenal might already be compromised? How many of their warheads now have empty fuel canisters? ISIS could be creating dirty bombs for deployment in U.S. cities. Worse, they could be developing their own nuclear weapons.”
“ISIS? Look, I know they’re getting more sophisticated now that Saddam’s old generals are taking command positions, but building a nuke? That seems far-fetched.”
“Yesterday, I would have agreed. But, according to Craig, whoever manufactured that decoy canister is extremely knowledgeable and well equipped. It doesn’t take much anymore, Mitch. You know that. It won’t be long before nuclear weapons technology is a century old. In an age of computer-aided design, CNC machines, and 3-D printers, how hard is it really to put a weapon together? It’s the fuel that’s difficult. Weapons-grade fissile material takes an enormous amount of infrastructure to create.”
“And then there’s the Russian involvement,” Rapp said.
She nodded. “Beyond Ilya Gusev in Africa, we’ve got the pictures of the man who attacked Scott. Based on his features, I’d say there’s greater than a fifty percent chance that he’s of eastern European descent.”
“But what’s in it for the Russians? Why would they get involved in something like this?”
“Those are two pieces of the puzzle that I haven’t been able to put together. What I can tell you, though, is that Maxim Krupin is one of the most dangerous men in the world. From the outside he seems to have iron-fisted control of Russia, but it’s not true. His supporters are loyal only to the point that he’s making them money, and he has countless enemies who will attack the moment they see an opportunity.”
“And the cracks are starting to show.”
She nodded. “We’re predicting that the Russian economy will shrink another four percent this year and that government revenue could be down as much as thirty percent. Krupin’s power—and the country itself—just isn’t sustainable in the current environment. It’s an example of the dark side of low oil prices. On the surface it seems that weakening regimes like Russia and Venezuela would be a good thing. But weakness can turn to chaos in the blink of an eye. You wouldn’t believe how much time I spend trying to get politicians to focus on Russia. It’s a country with sixteen hundred nuclear warheads controlled by a single man. And, having met Krupin on a number of occasions, I can tell you that there is nothing he
won’t do to maintain his position. Including turning the planet into a burned-out cinder.”
“I feel like we’re getting too far ahead of ourselves, Irene. What we need to do now is assess the damage and make sure no more is done. Our first order of business should be finding out how many of Pakistani’s nukes have been compromised. And that means you’re going to have to get me in front of President Chutani and the general.”
“That’s easier said than done, Mitch. Our relationship with Pakistani army command isn’t exactly warm and those two are on the brink of taking opposite sides in a civil war.”
“Contact General Shirani and tell him I’m on my way back with the nuke. Tell him that if he’s not there when I land, I’m going to hand it over to Chutani in front of a bunch of television cameras. And I’m going to use those cameras to tell the Pakistani people how their president forced the Great Satan to return their weapon while the army sat around with its thumb up its ass.”
Kennedy considered that for a moment. “It might just work. Shirani’s trying to portray himself as a strong leader who can strike fear into the hearts of Pakistan’s enemies. Your narrative could cut his legs out from under him.”
Rapp downed the rest of his Coke. “Joe and I are going to head back to Virginia and get that nuke in the air. Let’s talk later about how and where to deliver it.”
“Not so fast, Mitch. I’m meeting with President Alexander in an hour and he wants you there.”
Rapp shook his head and started for the hallway. “Meetings are your job, Irene. Tell him I’ll see him when I get back.”
CHAPTER 26
NEAR DOMINICAL
COSTA RICA
GRISHA Azarov leapt over a rotting log and immediately ducked beneath a branch arcing down from his right. It would have been easier to drop and roll, but that maneuver would cost him time. In his experience, almost three quarters of a second.
He entered a clearing and increased his speed, taking the steepest line up a dirt slope, staying low to minimize his profile. While he doubted there was anyone hiding in the dense foliage on either side of him, it had happened before.