by Vince Flynn
The young Saudi officer nodded convincingly. “Wasem was an arrogant fool. Your strategy is the only logical one.”
Rapp leaned back in his seat again, more or less satisfied. The kid was a little green but he wasn’t stupid. And he seemed anxious to stay inside the chopper.
“What’s the story?” Mason said over Rapp’s headset. “You getting out or not?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I’ve got some bad news for you.”
“You charge extra.”
“Goes without saying. But that’s not the worst of it.”
“What is?”
“I can land this bird, but with the wind I can’t guarantee that I’ll ever be able to get her back up again.”
“Do we have rappelling gear?”
“That’s a negative.”
“So I’m jumping?”
“Yeah.”
“How far?”
“Well, the way—”
“How far, Fred?”
“I can probably get you to within thirty feet. You know. Roughly.”
Rapp unstrapped from his seat and moved to the chopper’s open door. Dangling his legs out the side, he squinted at the desert floor flashing by. The temperature was hovering at just over a hundred, and he could feel the sun burning into the thin fabric covering his legs. There was a one-liter water bottle strapped to the side of the seat next to him and he started chugging it.
This part of the operation had always been a long shot. The hope was that he could get to the abandoned oil facility in time to neutralize ISIS’s command structure before the Saudi aircraft attacked. It would significantly reduce the chances of a detonation, but it wasn’t as simple as taking out a couple of guys driving through the open desert. The facility was immense, complicated, and hiding a force of unknown strength. Now he was going to have to cover a lot of ground on foot with no practical way to carry water and armed only with a Glock that might or might not shoot straight.
Fred Mason’s voice came over the comm as they slowed to an unsteady hover above the southern face of a massive dune. “This is about the best I can do, Mitch.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“What are you complaining about? I don’t see any rocks.”
Rapp removed his headset and put his feet onto the skids, leaning out over the desert. A gust caused the helicopter’s nose to dip and he let go, falling for what felt like way too long before hitting the sand and plummeting down the slope. He didn’t fight it, staying relaxed and letting gravity do its work until he bogged down twenty feet from the bottom.
CHAPTER 53
RAPP lay on his stomach in the sand, completely motionless. There was no sign of life in the oil-production facility intermittently visible four hundred yards away. But that was expected. His gut told him the ISIS men were there. The question was how many, how well armed, and in which of a thousand tactically viable positions?
A particularly strong gust tore across the landscape and Rapp leapt to his feet, running almost fifty yards before being forced down again by the clearing air.
While waiting for another opportunity to advance, he examined the details of the structure. At this range, the size and complexity of it made a serious impression. Countless thousands of tons of steel had been fashioned into a maze of pipes, ladders, and walkways. The sand was drifted up beneath one end but otherwise the facility looked like it could still be in operation.
His earpiece started to crackle, but the bulky radio clipped to his belt wasn’t enough to fully pick up the signal. He maxed out the volume and a few intelligible words emerged from the static. Bazzi checking in with his men. Responses were spotty due to the limitations of Rapp’s equipment, but the Saudi officer’s calm tone suggested that the remaining choppers were all still in the air.
“This is Scout Six,” Rapp said into his throat mike. “Come in, command.”
“Go ahe—” Static drowned out Bazzi’s voice. “I repeat. Go ahead, Scout Six.”
“I’ve got too much ground to cover and not enough time, Captain. If I move fast, I’m going to risk being spotted and blowing this whole thing to shit.”
“Copy that, Scout Six. I understand that you’re going to hold your position until I give the attack order. Please confirm.”
“That’s an affirmative, command. Good luck.”
“May Allah be with you, Scout Six.”
• • •
“How much longer?” Captain Bazzi said into his headset.
“The ETA on your screen’s about right,” Mason responded. “A little less than five minutes.”
“That’s cutting it very close, Mr. Mason.”
“I’m dealing with the laws of aerodynamics up here, Captain. Unless God owes you a serious favor, this is as fast as we go.”
Bazzi saw no reason to question the man further. He had flown with Saudi Arabia’s best pilots and none were even remotely as skilled. The engines were pushed to—or perhaps past—their limit and no compromises were being made in the interest of safety. Outside the door to his left, the desert floor was speeding by far too close for the conditions and visibility had gone from poor to disastrous.
On the laptop screen, the dots continued to glow, indifferent to his situation. The CIA was constantly updating the data and as of now they were projecting the soonest possible detonation at approximately seven minutes.
“Status report,” he said into his headset.
Every one of his men responded that they were in position and holding, one minute out from their target.
Bazzi wiped the gritty sweat from his forehead and continued to stare at the screen. In the end, there was only on realistic option—to follow Mitch Rapp’s orders to the letter. The man had more experience in these kinds of operations than anyone alive and his list of failures was shockingly short. Further, if the worst happened, his reputation suggested that he could be counted on to take responsibility and stand in support of a meaningless young Saudi captain. Men like him—and American soldiers in general—were loath to turn their backs on people loyal to them.
“Hold your position and await my orders,” Bazzi said, realizing that those were likely the most critical words he would ever speak. “We will be going in approximately two minutes.”
Those one hundred twenty seconds seemed to stretch into infinity as he stared blankly at the seat that he wished Mitch Rapp still occupied. Finally, Mason’s voice came over his headset.
“We’re one minute out, Captain.”
Bazzi activated his own microphone. “Attack. I repeat. Attack.”
He took a position at the helicopter’s door gun as his teams confirmed his orders.
A few moments later, Mason came back on the comm. “I have a visual. Northwest about a kick. Hold on to your ass.”
Bazzi was slammed into the bulkhead and then into the gun as the pilot fought to put them into an attack posture. The helicopter circled east and Bazzi saw the target vehicle’s trajectory turn evasive. They’d been spotted.
Mason came to the same realization and immediately rotated the aircraft to bring the door gun to bear. The wind was now hitting them broadside and the chopper pitched wildly as Bazzi depressed the trigger.
The first rounds stitched across the SUV’s hood and he fought to adjust his aim to its passenger compartment. The CIA’s best guess was that the terrorists would be using military-grade C-4, a stable explosive that was unlikely to detonate even if it took a direct hit. The danger was that one of the men in the vehicle had the detonator in hand and at the ready.
The helicopter rocked back and Bazzi struggled to stay on target, ripping a line of gaping holes down the center of the vehicle before the rounds started slamming into the sand behind.
“Down!” he shouted. “Bring us lower!”
Mason did as he was told and Bazzi managed to realign his sights on the vehicle’s front windshield. When he opened fire, it swerved right and overturned, rolling down a steep slope to the east.
Mason
tried to pull up, but it was impossible. The rotors were kicking up a dense cloud of sand now, blinding Bazzi as he tried to back away from the door.
“That’s it, Captain! Hang on! We’re going in!”
He braced himself as Mason tried to control their descent. The soft sand absorbed some of the impact but also created an unpredictable surface that was impossible to compensate for. Bazzi was thrown backward as one side of the chopper sank and the rotors dug in.
When he struggled back to his feet, he registered that his right arm was broken. Not so badly that he couldn’t use it to escape, though. He climbed out of the open door, ignoring the pain, and running toward the SUV lying on its side fifty meters away.
The man in the passenger seat was still belted in place but most of the right side of his head was missing. The driver had been thrown from the vehicle and was laying facedown ten meters away.
While neither of them appeared to be capable of detonating the weapon, the danger of a remote activation was still very real. The SUV’s doors and rear gate were still shut and Bazzi was unable to get them open. Instead, he used his good hand to push out the spiderwebbed rear window and then began dragging a large toolbox through the opening.
It was an agonizingly slow process, but he managed to get it halfway out before a gun sounded behind him. Pain flared in the back of his right thigh and his leg collapsed beneath him. From his position on the ground, he could see that the driver was on his feet, staggering in his direction with a pistol. The next round hit the side of the car only a few inches from Bazzi’s head as he tried to draw his own sidearm with his injured arm.
A rapid burst of shots erupted before he could get his pistol clear of its holster and Bazzi flattened himself in the sand. When the sound faded he looked up, confused by the fact that he was still alive. That confusion was amplified when he saw the driver motionless in the sand. Finally, he glanced back and saw Fred Mason collapse to his knees with an assault rifle in his hands.
Bazzi limped back to the window and wrestled the toolbox the rest of the way out of the vehicle. It took what seemed like a lifetime, but he managed to empty its contents and find evidence of a false bottom. Aware that it could explode at any moment, he fought to keep his hands from shaking.
The release for the bottom was relatively easy to locate and he was relieved to see that the explosive was less complex than he’d anticipated—nothing more than a digital keypad connected to a block of C-4. Next to it was a sizable sheet metal box that he assumed contained the radioactive material.
Bazzi removed the detonator probe and let out a long breath before clamping a hand over his leg wound and lurching toward Fred Mason. The pilot gave him a weak thumbs-up from his position lying in the sand, so the Saudi officer went to the chopper instead. He put on a headset and tried to get a situation report, but the comm was dead.
After a few pointless attempts to get it working, he went forward to check on Mason’s unconscious copilot. Their role in this was done. The rest was in God’s hands.
• • •
“Command,” Rapp said into his comm. “This is Scout Six. Come in.”
Once again, no response.
He’d been able to make out two confirmed kills but the rest of the chatter was too garbled to understand. Had Bazzi and the others achieved their missions? Or was there a massive radioactive cloud drifting north across Saudi Arabia?
In the end, it made little difference. One way or another, the other scouts were finished with their mission. His was just beginning.
Rapp was still about three hundred fifty yards out—a distance he had deemed safe. If a couple of ISIS fanatics were running this operation from the interior of the facility, they would immediately detonate when they discovered their comrades were under attack. But that hadn’t happened. The complex was still intact and there was still no sign of life. Either the Agency’s analysts were full of shit and the facility was empty or the man with his finger on the button had no interest in martyring himself.
Azarov.
CHAPTER 54
“PLEASE repeat your last.”
Grisha Azarov reluctantly pushed an earpiece the rest of the way into his right ear. The left was already taken by a radio link. Combined, they muffled the clang of a loose piece of sheet metal above him, but also isolated him from his environment in a way that was always dangerous.
“I am showing all teams moving into position,” Maxim Krupin said. “ETA is eight minutes. Confirm.”
It seemed pointless since they were looking at the same satellite data, but the Russian president would leave nothing to chance. Azarov used a hand to shade his cell phone and examined the washed-out map image.
“Eight minutes confirmed.”
“You have my authorization to carry out the operation. When all teams are in position, signal them to detonate.”
“Understood.”
Azarov sat with his back against the thick steel plate that made up one side of an enclosure that was one of the most defensible in the complex. After that, time started to pass with almost supernatural slowness. He was accustomed to the mind-numbing lulls of combat, but this one was intensified by the fact that it would likely be his last. He allowed his mind to drift forward—to enjoy the luxury of considering something beyond being victorious on the day. What would it be like to wake up in his home and have no mission to prepare for? No training schedule to obsessively follow or physical test to complete?
Would he . . . fish? It was something he hadn’t done since sawing through the frozen lakes of Russia with his father. Or perhaps surfing lessons would be in order. Cara had offered a free introduction to the sport on a number of occasions. Was it time to consider accepting that offer?
A shrill alarm sounded in his remaining earpiece and he looked down at his phone. One of the ISIS teams had gone offline. He assumed it was just a communications problem that would quickly correct itself. Instead, a second alarm sounded and another of the tiny onscreen dots flashed out of existence. The intensifying storm? Or something else?
Azarov connected to the operation’s open frequency. “All teams report.”
Static.
“All teams report,” he repeated.
Still no response.
It was more than could be explained by the storm. The images on his phone were being transmitted by a satellite link, while voice communications were being handled by a radio-based system. The chance that both were failing at the same time was remote in the extreme. Much more likely, the ISIS teams had been discovered and either succumbed to attack or detonated without his authorization.
The next sound that came over his earpiece wasn’t an alarm but a notification of another call from Maxim Krupin. He was monitoring the operation from the comfort of his office in the Kremlin and would be concerned by what he was seeing.
Azarov ignored the call. If the other teams had been discovered, then this place would likely be known to the enemy as well. Attacking the large, complex facility, though, would be significantly more difficult. Did he still have time to escape? The storm would provide cover and if necessary he could—
“Contact north.”
The English coming over the radio was excellent, tainted only by a moderate Dutch accent. Hassan was the son of Syrians who had settled in Amsterdam—a store clerk who had become bored with his life and joined ISIS.
“Details?”
“It appears to be a single man. Approaching on foot.”
Azarov closed his eyes and let out a long breath. The mental image of his home in Costa Rica, so vivid a few minutes before, began to lose focus.
“Did you say a single man? Confirm.”
“Affirmative.”
“Keep eyes on the target.”
The Russian moved from his protected position and navigated the convoluted collection of ladders, catwalks, and ramps that led to the northern edge of the facility. He crawled the last ten meters, setting up in a well-camouflaged position with a gap wide enough to get a sp
otting scope through.
He had to admit to being impressed by Hassan’s attentiveness. With the blowing sand, it took Azarov almost ten seconds to spot the figure running down the back of a dune some one hundred fifty meters away.
The most immediate impression was that the man was extremely fast. While perhaps not as powerful as he himself was, this lone attacker’s skill at negotiating the soft desert surface was unquestionably superior.
Finer details became apparent as the distance between them narrowed. He was wearing the uniform of a Saudi soldier but with no visible insignias. Weaponry appeared to be limited to a single handgun holstered on his hip. Much more interesting, though, was his face. At first Azarov assumed it was just heat distortion but he could now see that this assumption was in error. The man’s nose was badly broken and both eyes were blackened. Partially hidden by a thick beard, his lips were split and distorted, complementing similarly swollen cheekbones.
In another world, watching this man charging their position alone would have been almost comical. But this wasn’t another world and there was only one man with this combination of speed and audacity.
“Rohab,” Azarov said, connecting to his men again, “join Hassan on the north end of the facility. Engage and kill the man approaching.”
“I understand,” came the reply.
If this was indeed Mitch Rapp, the tactical situation presented some interesting opportunities. The American was clearly injured, had run an undetermined distance in the oppressive heat, and was unlikely to be familiar with the structure that he was approaching.
While escaping and luring Rapp to northern Russia still had benefits, it also had a number of drawbacks. Rapp would have the full resources of the CIA behind him while Azarov would be alone. With no urgency on the American’s part, he would have significant control over the time of their next meeting and would use that time to heal and plan.
The more Azarov considered the situation, the more it became obvious that the moment for this confrontation was now. After he killed Rapp, he would contact Irene Kennedy and propose a truce. She had the reputation of being an eminently reasonable woman and would see no profit in risking more of her men in a pointless quest for revenge.