Order to Kill

by Vince Flynn

  A gust struck from the south, kicking up an opaque cloud of sand that blasted the skin on Azarov’s hands and face. When it cleared, the man was gone.

  CHAPTER 55

  RAPP dropped to his stomach, ignoring the searing heat of the sand beneath him. There was still no sign of opposition, but he now had a solid view of the north side of the facility. Azarov would hang back—sacrifice any pawns he had in hopes of getting lucky or at the very least wearing Rapp out.

  Those pawns would likely be handpicked from ISIS. Even if they had military experience and additional spec ops training, these weren’t SAS or Delta. In his experience, they would lack any capacity for subtlety or out-of-the-box thinking. They’d take the most obvious positions and attack at the first opportunity. No matter what the job, jihadists could always be counted on to reach for the hammer.

  When the next gust hit, he sprinted through the opaque dust cloud it created. The soft sand gave way to concrete and he slowed, squeezing between two upright pipes and keeping to where the tangle of machinery was most dense. It robbed him of his ability to see much more than five feet in a straight line, but that limitation would go both ways.

  Rapp pulled his Glock and started weaving through the steel maze. There was an obvious vantage point on the second level, about fifteen yards to his right. He himself might have been attracted to it in his younger days. The position would provide an unobstructed view north, as well as reasonable protection from the wind. Even more advantageous, practical access from below was blocked by a massive cylindrical tank.

  Rapp spotted a drift that went almost to a catwalk ten feet above and began climbing it. At the top, he had to dig to widen the gap between the sand and the metal grid, but managed to get through without making a sound loud enough to rise above the wind.

  He inched forward through the dangerously confined space. After a few feet, he spotted a boot protruding from behind a steel plate. Rapp looked at the Glock in his hand and then reluctantly holstered it. Without a silencer, using the gun would be too much of a risk.

  He found a broken pipe and quietly dug it from the sand. While not exactly sharp, one end looked jagged enough for his purposes. He kept moving forward, slipping from beneath the catwalk and continuing along the drift as it climbed toward a hard ceiling of electrical conduits.

  After about a minute, he had a full view of his target: Middle Eastern male, lying prone, searching the desert through a scope mounted to an AK-47.

  The angle of the sun was going to be a problem. Rapp had it at his back, which was normally an advantage, but in this case it would cause him to throw a shadow. He stayed low to minimize the problem, but there was no way to change the laws of physics. His shadow moved steadily up the man’s back and finally entered his peripheral vision when Rapp was still almost ten feet out.

  The terrorist rolled, desperately trying to swing the AK with him. The confined space that was slowing Rapp’s approach had a similar effect on his target. The rifle’s barrel caught on the edge of a drain lever and a moment later Rapp drove the broken end of the pipe into the man’s sternum. He threw his full weight behind it and managed to drive the steel down until it hit concrete.

  Rapp immediately retreated, suspecting that the dead man was working as part of a two-man team. That suspicion was confirmed when automatic fire erupted from below and rounds began sparking off a storage tank to his right.

  Rapp vaulted a railing and sprinted for a set of stairs to the west, unable to see the man firing. The steps were solid steel plate and he could feel the vibration of bullet impacts as he took them three at a time.

  The shooter was still invisible below, but it was clear that he was firing from the left. Ahead, the stairs dead-ended into a T. To the right, they continued up and eventually disappeared into the glare of the sun. To the left was a low gate blocking access to a steel mesh catwalk.

  When he reached the T, Rapp feinted right and then went left, leaping over the gate and landing on the catwalk. The shooter had anticipated him continuing up the stairs, and the rounds pounded along them as Rapp drew his Glock.

  Through the open weave beneath his feet, he immediately spotted his target: a single man in the process of adjusting his aim from the stairs to the American standing above him.

  There was no clear angle, so Rapp just aimed through the steel mesh and began firing. He stayed on target, pumping five rounds into the catwalk before a bullet finally got through clean. It hit the man in the collarbone, causing him to lose control of his weapon and spray a girder above him. A moment later, the right side of his head was torn away. He’d been taken out by one of his own ricochets.

  Rapp jumped the guardrail and dropped ten feet into the soft sand next to the body. A quick search turned up a throat mike and he removed it, closing it around his own neck and inserting the earpiece. No one was on the comm, so he activated the microphone and jabbered breathlessly in Arabic.

  “I killed him! I’m the only survivor, but I won. The man is dead!”

  The voice that responded had a distinct Russian inflection. Not unexpected, but the sound of it still made Rapp grip his Glock a little tighter.

  “Hassan. Calm down. Speak in English.”

  Rapp repeated the sentiment in the requested language but with a distinct Arab accent.

  There was a good five seconds of silence before the voice came back on. “My compliments on the speed and stealth of your approach, Mr. Rapp. And with how efficiently you were able to deal with my men. But Hassan was Dutch.”

  “Sometimes you have to play the percentages,” Rapp said.

  “It’s what I would have done.”

  “You’ve lost, Grisha. Why not just surrender? You don’t owe Maxim Krupin anything. Sure as hell not your life.”

  “What you say is true. But I suspect that the future you have planned for me isn’t one I would enjoy.”

  “Maybe we can work something out.”

  “You would never agree to my demands.”

  “Are you sure?” Rapp said, checking his magazine and starting toward a ladder to the south. “Try me.”

  This time the silence stretched out even longer. Finally, Azarov responded. “What I want, Mr. Rapp—what I need—is for you to never leave this place.”

  CHAPTER 56

  RAPP inched forward on the steel mesh catwalk and then swung smoothly around the corner with his Glock stretched out in front of him. The walkway continued through a corridor of pipes before disappearing behind what looked like a small office.

  He was near the facility’s high point, following a pattern that avoided choke points where Azarov might be waiting. The longer he could put off their inevitable confrontation, the better.

  While Rapp had never been particularly good with names or phone numbers, he had a photographic memory for battlefields and tactical situations. He’d won a fair amount of money in college betting people that he could remember the positions of every person on a lacrosse field at any given moment in a game. Now he was using that unusual ability to create a detailed mental map of the facility.

  Unfortunately, its size and complexity were taxing even his considerable talents. It was separated into three sections, largely inaccessible to each other—possibly to contain fires or explosions. There were four loosely defined levels accessed via countless ladders, steps, and ramps. Mesh walkways of varying widths snaked in every direction, diving in and out of view as they faded into the dusty air.

  He started forward, moving his head back and forth, taking in everything. About halfway to the office, he crouched beneath a small overhang. The boots he’d been provided were good in the sand, but a disaster on the thin steel he was moving across. They were not only heavy, but also caused a dull ring with every footfall. Rapp was reluctant to abandon them, but decided that it was the better of his two bad options.

  He covered the remaining length of the walkway in stocking feet, noting that his footfalls were now completely inaudible and that his traction wasn’t too badly compro
mised. On the downside, the steel was hot enough to burn through to his feet.

  Rapp slipped through the open door to the office and ducked below an empty window frame. The room was probably only ten feet square and full of debris not worth taking when the facility was abandoned. A spitting image of the place where Azarov had taken out Scott Coleman. Hopefully, not an omen of what was to come.

  He pawed through the files, furniture, and tools on the floor, looking for anything useful. No ice-cold Cokes or silencers were on offer, but he did find a pile of old work clothing that was of interest. Like his abandoned boots, the tan uniform had been useful in the sand but was less than optimal in a complex built primarily of unpainted steel. The gray overalls wadded up in the corner would provide better camouflage and had the potential to confuse his opponent’s expectations. They even turned out to be his size.

  Better yet was a pair of well-used socks that he pulled on over his own. They added just enough insulation to protect his feet from the sun-heated metal and would mitigate any damage should he hit a jagged edge or have to move fast.

  Rapp started crawling back toward the door when he spotted a large wrench beneath an Arabic language newspaper. He wrapped it in the pants he’d taken off and shoved it down the back of his overalls. It wasn’t the most convenient thing to carry into battle, but he had an idea that might make it worth the weight.

  Rapp stayed low as he came back onto the catwalk and turned left. He covered the next fifty yards in a little less than a minute, continuing to mentally map the maze around him. As he was nearing a set of steps connecting two catwalks, his peripheral vision detected motion above and to his right. Instinctively, he threw himself backward and fired in the direction of the movement. Just as he did, a bullet sparked off a pipe directly to left of where his head had been a split second before.

  • • •

  Grisha Azarov ducked involuntarily when a bullet hissed past him at what he estimated was a distance of less than a meter. His own shot had been perfectly aligned, but Rapp dropped to the ground an instant before it could find its mark.

  The Russian immediately began analyzing the rare failure. As expected, Rapp was extremely quick and had razor-sharp battlefield instincts, but these gifts weren’t the reasons he was still alive. That was Azarov’s own fault. He’d been looking for a man in Saudi army fatigues and the change had caused him to hesitate. A brief sliver of time that against any other opponent would have been meaningless. Against Mitch Rapp, it was the kind of mistake that could prove fatal.

  Now there was nowhere for the CIA man to go—he was stranded in the low ground with little overhead cover. Azarov sprinted toward a ladder and climbed halfway up it, leaping onto an immense pipe and landing with a deep ring that resonated through the air. He let his momentum carry him to a three-meter gap that plunged down to the base of the facility. Falling forward onto his stomach, he thrust his pistol over the edge of the narrow platform he’d come to a stop on. Rapp was one level below, running along the only catwalk accessible to him. His back was square to Azarov’s position. An easy shot even for a novice.

  He lined up, but before he could fire, Rapp vaulted the railing and fell toward the top of a containment tank no more than two meters in diameter. The reason he’d been able to run so silently became evident when he landed. His stocking feet provided no purchase on the smooth steel and he slid out of control toward its edge. A moment later, he was gone. Azarov heard the dull thuds of a body bouncing through the pipes on its way to the ground. While impossible to see from his current position, he knew that it was at least a thirty-meter drop. Impossible even for the storied Mitch Rapp to survive.

  The Russian continued to aim over the top of the platform, his heart rate higher than it had been on an operation in years. It was difficult to conclude anything but that the man had fallen. Removing his boots had been a reasonable risk to take, but in this case the strategy had failed. Mitch Rapp was either dead or dying, his broken body bleeding into the sand.

  Then why was he still afraid of the American? It seemed inconceivable that Rapp had survived, but until Azarov saw the body, the possibility existed. As much as he wanted to retreat to the SUV and escape across the desert, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not until he was certain of the CIA man’s fate.

  • • •

  Rapp threw himself to the catwalk, already certain that the Hail Mary shot he’d taken at the Russian had gone wide. He immediately rolled to his feet and began sprinting toward a series of tanks about ten feet from the edge of the right hand railing.

  If he were Azarov, he’d climb halfway up the ladder to his left and then use a large pipe to gain a platform that jutted out over open air. It would provide a perfect position to fire down on Rapp’s unprotected position.

  He was only about halfway to the tanks when the ring of someone landing on that very overhead pipe sounded—a full second sooner than Rapp thought possible. He pushed himself to a speed that felt like it was going to shatter his bad knee with every stride.

  The second ring reached him when he was still ten feet out from the section of railing he was he was going for. Azarov would be lining up and this time he wouldn’t miss.

  Rapp leapt the rail earlier than planned but still managed to clear the gap, landing on top of a tank and going into an uncontrolled slide toward the opposite edge. He tumbled over and dropped five feet before grabbing a steel grid that, thank God, was right where he remembered it. The Glock was still in his left hand and stopping his momentum with only his right demanded a graceless maneuver that nearly dislocated his shoulder.

  Once he got his feet under him, he yanked the wrench from his overalls and threw it down at the pipes below. The fact that it was wrapped in cloth kept it from ringing against the metal, instead giving it a muted thud that would be fairly convincing mixed with the howl of the wind.

  The Russian was in an adjacent section of the facility and there was no easy way for him to cross over. That made it possible for Rapp to take his time climbing down and gaining a walkway twenty feet below. What would Azarov do now? Was he trusting enough to go for his vehicle and run? Or would he want to confirm that his adversary was dead?

  Probably the latter, Rapp decided. The question was what to do about it. Though he and Azarov couldn’t easily get to each other, the Russian did have access to a vantage point that would allow him to see that his opponent’s corpse was conspicuously absent. That left Rapp with a short window where he could use the element of surprise. The problem was that the only way he knew of to cross to Azarov’s sector was an open catwalk on the top level. By the time he reached it, the Russian would know his opponent was alive and would be looking for the move.

  Rapp traversed the walkway, protected by a firewall on his right. It turned to steel mesh for about five feet and he searched the area visible through it before darting across. After covering another ten feet, he came to a sudden halt and turned around. The bottom corner of the mesh had broken free of its spot welds and was curled back a good five inches.

  He walked back to it and shoved the detached edge with his foot. It took everything he had, but he managed to pop two more welds. Were the rest similarly weak?

  Rapp crept along the catwalk, searching for something he could use as a pry bar. Finally he found a shutoff valve with a long lever connected by nothing but a pin. It took some effort, but he managed to work it free.

  Wedging the steel rod into the hole in the mesh, Rapp threw his full weight behind it. A moment later he was rewarded by the quiet crack of welds giving way.

  When the gap was wide enough, he stuffed his Glock down the back of his overalls and squeezed through. There was nothing on the other side to stand on, so he grabbed an overhead pipe and went hand over hand across it. The pain in his injured shoulder was excruciating, but there was no way to favor it. If his sweaty hands lost their grip, Azarov would find exactly what he expected to find in the tangle of pipes below.

  Rapp finally reached another catwalk
and dropped onto it, landing in a crouch. He was operating blind now—there had been no time to survey this part of the facility.

  He stayed in the shadows, stopping every few seconds to listen for sound that couldn’t be explained by the wind. Finally, he was rewarded. The quiet rhythm of footsteps became audible below and to his right.

  He flattened himself on the catwalk and let his Glock hang over the edge. A moment later, cautious movements became intermittently visible through the mesh. Range was just under thirty yards.

  There was no clear shot but he knew he wasn’t going to get another chance like this one. He needed to drive Azarov onto the more open left side of the walkway he was on. Just a couple feet was all Rapp needed. He waited for the optimal moment and fired, slamming a bullet into an electrical conduit a few feet to Azarov’s right.

  Instead of moving left, though, the Russian went low and right, throwing himself toward the conduit Rapp had just hit and disappearing from sight.

  “Shit!” Rapp said under his breath. This guy wasn’t just good, he was a fucking prodigy.

  Despite that, now the Russian was in a box. Going back would be too much exposure for him to risk. However, there was an open pipe about six feet in diameter ahead of him and only the top four feet were visible from Rapp’s position. It was Azarov’s only option, and it wasn’t a bad one. He undoubtedly knew where it led, while Rapp had no idea.

  An elongated shadow appeared at the entrance to the pipe and Rapp unloaded his entire clip into the confined space, firing a wide, random pattern. He pulled back and slammed in his last full magazine before rising again. The shadow was gone but there was something near the edge of the pipe that he didn’t remember seeing earlier. Rapp thought it might be rust, but when he moved to a better vantage point, the dark smudge took on a familiar color.