by Vince Flynn
The absence of the Glock 19 under his arm made him feel a little naked as he stepped out of the car. Getting a weapon into Saudi Arabia without CIA support was virtually impossible and acquiring one in-country was overly risky. He actually had a safe house in Riyadh that no one knew about, but once he retrieved the gun hidden beneath the floorboards, it would be blown forever. Better to save that for a rainy day even if it would likely lead to a little more improvisation than he’d normally tolerate. For the time being, anonymity was more valuable than firepower.
He pulled up the collar on his light jacket and walked up the middle of the street where the darkness was the deepest. A half-moon hung to the east, but barely provided enough illumination to keep him from tripping over the cracks in the asphalt. After a few minutes at a casual pace, he spotted Singh’s car parked inside a chain-link fence that surrounded a partially built warehouse. Maybe he wasn’t such a pro after all. Rule number one when contracting for an intelligence agency: don’t agree to predawn meetings at construction sites.
The cameras mounted to the fence all appeared to have been deactivated—something that didn’t happen in Saudi Arabia without the government’s blessing. Whatever was going to happen there, someone powerful didn’t want any record of it.
The sound of an engine reached him from the west. He climbed the fence and dropped to the ground before headlights became visible. Once inside the perimeter, he ran to the building, slipping through the deep shadows that clung to the walls. With the cameras off, he was probably safe, but it didn’t pay to take those kinds of things for granted. When he reached the front, he peered past Singh’s car at two approaching vehicles. They stopped at the gate and a man stepped out to open it. He moved like a professional—graceful, silent, and paying as much attention to his environment as he could while also getting a key into the padlock. A bulge in his silhouette suggested that he was armed with something more formidable than the paring knife Rapp had brought from his rental.
The bulky SUVs pulled in and the man closed but didn’t lock the gate. Clearly, preparing for an efficient departure when their meeting was over. Probably not good news for Singh.
There was no way for Rapp to get in through the front—the men staying with the SUVs would have that covered. But the back of the building looked like it had sections that weren’t finished and had been covered with tarps to keep the sand out. If there was a gap in one, he could probably slip through. Tarps were tricky, though. While not particularly solid, they were shockingly loud if you had to move them.
Rapp found a potential ingress point beneath a sheet of plastic that didn’t quite reach the ground. He was on his belly with his head already partly beneath it when the darkness was interrupted by two flashes accompanied by what sounded like a silenced .22 pistol.
Shit.
There were a few indistinct Arabic voices and then someone announced he was leaving. Rapp extricated himself from the plastic and started back around the building, moving as quickly as possible while still remaining silent.
An engine started but he managed to reach the front before it pulled away. Three men were standing outside the idling SUV talking quietly among themselves. The darkness hid their features while the glare of headlights illuminated the twenty yards separating Rapp from them. If there had been one man behind the wheel and only two absorbed in conversation, he might have had a chance. Cover the distance at full speed. Take down the two talking men. Get hold of a weapon. Kill the driver before he could get a shot off. Deal with the people still inside the building.
Maybe a sixty percent chance of survival.
With three men outside the SUV, though, that probability dropped into the single digits. Particularly because one didn’t seem all that interested in what was being said. Instead, he was searching the darkness around him, keeping one hand inside his jacket and moving his head randomly so Rapp couldn’t take advantage of a pattern. Definitely not some run-of-the-mill Arab dipshit. If Scott Coleman had been there, he’d be looking to make this asshole a job offer.
Rapp was trying to come up with some kind of diversion when one of the men lit a cigarette. The flare briefly revealed his features as he and one of his companions got back into the SUV. They pulled away while the third man got into Singh’s car and left via the same route, undoubtedly on his way to a junkyard where the vehicle would be crushed and shipped off for scrap.
Rapp stayed put, waiting for almost a half hour before the other two men reappeared from the building. They climbed into their SUV, pulled through the gate, and then headed out after locking it behind them. Rapp waited until their taillights were no longer visible before entering. The gloom was even deeper and he relied on his nose to guide him as his eyes struggled to adjust. There was no mistaking the smell of fresh concrete.
The wet slab he found was about ten feet by ten feet—filling a mold next to a completed section of floor. Time was of the essence, so he just waded in, scooping his hands through the thick concrete until he found Singh’s ankle. There was no point in dragging the body out, so he just searched it there. A wallet. A cell phone with the back missing that looked to be in pretty bad shape. A flip phone that was a little better protected. And, finally, a soggy Browning Hi-Power. That was it.
Rapp used a foot to sink him again and then the tools that had been left behind to smooth the slab. His work wouldn’t win any prizes, but he needed to be the hell out of there before those cameras came back on.
He went back out front, climbing the fence and running toward his vehicle. A quick glance over his shoulder confirmed that the surveillance systems were still shut down. The GID probably figured that there was no hurry. Singh wasn’t going anywhere and work on the building wouldn’t start again for at least another few hours.
* * *
Rapp finally allowed himself to relax a bit when he turned onto the freeway. He kept the Porsche steady, splitting his attention between searching for tails and making sure the concrete he was dripping stayed on the floor mat.
Bashir Isa.
The GID man had lost some hair and gained a good twenty-five pounds but he was still unmistakable. They’d actually done a few operations together back when Rapp was still in his early thirties. He remembered the man as reasonably solid, a bit cynical, and not particularly religious by Saudi standards. Last Rapp had heard, he’d moved into middle management and become another anonymous cog in the Saudi intelligence machine. Probably the best a man with lukewarm feelings toward Allah and no relation to the royal family could do.
Or was it? Would someone like Isa be tapped as the handler of a CIA mole with the kind of access that Kennedy had described? Rapp doubted it. More likely the Saudi was just another buffer designed to separate the mole, the GID leadership, and the prince from Gideon Auma. And now that the Saudis thought that Auma had performed his function, the continued existence of those buffers had become an inconvenience.
The question was how high would the purge go. Based on the fact that even Marcus Dumond couldn’t figure out how the Agency had been hacked, probably pretty high. And that meant that Isa would likely be the next man on the ladder to find himself holding up the edge of a building.
38
EVERYTHING was unknown now. And if there was anything Rapp despised, it was unknowns.
He piloted his rented SUV through the empty streets, using an address for Bashir Isa that he’d gotten from a private intelligence company’s database. Was it current? Accurate? Those were a few more unknowns. Being cut off from both the CIA and Claudia wasn’t particularly convenient. Digging up and filtering information wasn’t really his end of the business.
Did Isa have a family? Probably. And if that was the case, it would be tricky to take him at home. The safer bet would be to head out into the open desert where the royal family had been hiding its skeletons for centuries.
On the other hand, someone like Isa would probably have a home office, a laptop, and maybe even some inconvenient information he was keeping as an insuran
ce policy for just this kind of eventuality. Rapp sure as hell did. Loyalties in this business could turn on a dime and it paid to have an exit strategy.
Or maybe Isa had moved up in the hierarchy enough to rise above loose-end status. Rapp continued to doubt it, though. Giving high-level CIA records to one of the world’s most brutal terrorists in order to help him attack the richest man in history was a path that led over some pretty thin ice. The prince would want the number of people who knew about a bullshit move like that to be pretty low. Best guess, two: the prince himself and his handpicked intelligence director.
The neighborhood Rapp ended up in was one of the many planned communities going up at the edges of Riyadh. Modern white stucco units sat on lots crammed with palm trees and other plant life that signaled status to desert-dwelling people. Walls were about seven feet high but broken by sections of horizontal wooden slats designed more for architectural interest than security. Gates were metal, each with unique artistic embellishments and widely spaced bars.
His phone informed him that his destination was on the right and he maintained his speed as he passed. The gate was closed, but the SUV that had been at the construction site was visible just inside it. The fact that it was still in Isa’s driveway didn’t bode well for his old acquaintance. It was a potential stroke of luck for Rapp, though.
He parked next to the curb and stepped out, noting that the neighborhood’s cameras appeared to be shut down like they had been at the construction site. Another thing in his favor. But, again, not so much Isa’s.
When he reached the gate, the two men who had left with Isa were nowhere to be seen. Rapp took advantage of their absence to climb a slatted section of wall and drop onto the lawn on the other side.
He weaved through the trees, noting the light bleeding around drapes and shades that had been carefully closed. There was no practical way to get around to the back and based on his continued ignorance of his tactical situation, one method of entry was as good as another. No reason not to just climb the steps leading to the front door and get this thing moving. If Isa wasn’t already dead, he would be soon.
The door was unlocked, so Rapp turned the knob and gave it a nudge. His left hand was wrapped around Muhammad Singh’s Browning Hi-Power, which he’d cleaned with a bottle of water on his drive over. Would it shoot? Who knew? What he was absolutely sure of, though, was that he wasn’t getting his deposit back on the Porsche.
The door swung partially open with no reaction from inside, so he peeked around the jamb. A tasteful entry with a living area on the right and a hallway to the left. The dim light that had been visible around the drapes was coming from an open door near the back. So were human voices, too low to be intelligible or even to differentiate. Were all three men in there or was one of them ensconced somewhere else in the house, searching for signs of trouble?
Only one way to find out.
The floor was stone, so Rapp opted to take off his shoes before easing across it. He approached the door cautiously, holding the potentially useless weapon in both hands. All the lights were on inside the room, but the hallway was in shadow, giving him an advantage. He managed to stay invisible while putting himself in a position to see about a third of the room. Bashir Isa was in nearly full view, sitting in a chair with his ankles secured to the legs and his hands bound behind it. His expression was a mix of anger and resignation—tight jaw, nostrils slightly flared, staring straight ahead at nothing.
“There’s another password. What is it?”
The man speaking was sitting behind Isa’s desk, a position that left him mostly obscured.
Isa gave it up, his tone suggesting that he knew exactly how this was going to end and just wanted to get it over with. It was a shitty way to go out after years of loyal service, but not one that would surprise him. Betrayal was the number one killer of intelligence operatives.
“I’m in,” the man said.
“What about hard copies?”
The sound of the second man’s voice allowed Rapp to relax a bit. Both shooters were now accounted for. One partially visible behind the desk, another invisible somewhere near the northwest corner of the room.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Isa responded.
“Bashir. Please. We’ve known each other for a long time. Don’t make this harder than it has to be and don’t force me to involve your family. It would break my heart.”
Isa’s eyes shifted to the unseen man who had just spoken. Undoubtedly someone he’d once considered a friend. And, in fact, probably really was. But business was business and personal was personal.
“In the garage,” Isa said finally. “There’s a series of drawers to the left of the door. If you remove the bottom one, there’s a lockbox at the back.”
By the time he’d finished his sentence, Rapp was already on the move. He retraced his steps and turned right, slipping through a door that led to a spacious one-car garage. Navigating by the red glow of his penlight, he grabbed a screwdriver before lying down in front of Isa’s Range Rover.
The door opened and the lights came on a few seconds later. He could see the man’s black running shoes below the cuffs of dark blue slacks. Not a brand that Rapp favored, but they were light, had good traction, and were designed to hold up to fast changes in direction.
He opened the drawer, swearing in Arabic as he tried to find the hidden latches that would allow him to free it. Finally, Rapp heard it drop to the concrete and he waited as the man worked the surprisingly loud combination lock. When the creak of the top opening became audible, Rapp slipped from behind the car, staying low so as to throw a minimal shadow. The man’s back was to him and Rapp’s socks made no sound at all against the garage slab. Unfortunately, his target had the sixth sense that many top operators possessed and began to spin, reaching for his gun when Rapp was still a couple of feet away.
It was too late, though. Rapp clamped a hand over his mouth and nose from behind before slamming the point of the screwdriver into the back of his head. The man’s body convulsed briefly and then went still. Rapp eased him to the ground and looked in the box he’d opened. The contents were basically what he expected—cash from various countries, passports, a few burner phones.
He took everything and then retrieved the SIG P226 holstered under the man’s arm. Well maintained, fully loaded, and completely free of wet concrete. Definitely an upgrade and the silencer in the pocket of his jacket was a flat-out godsend. Rapp screwed it on and started back toward Isa’s office. No need to be quiet. The man behind the desk would expect his compatriot to be returning right about now.
He didn’t even look up, never knowing anything about the bullet that hit him square in the forehead. Isa, however, did. He stared wide-eyed at Rapp as his freshly deceased captor slumped forward and began leaking blood onto the keyboard in front of him.
“And I thought my night couldn’t get worse,” he said in Arabic. “The years have been kind, Mitch. You look fit.”
“Really? Because you look like you’ve put on a few pounds.”
“Too much of the good life. Two wonderful children. A wife. By the looks of you, not something you have experience with.”
Rapp ignored the dig. “Are they in the house?”
Isa shook his head. “My son is at university and my wife’s visiting our daughter in Lebanon. I was to be a grandfather soon.”
“Then it’s your lucky day.”
“I don’t think being tied to a chair in front of Mitch Rapp has ever been a Muslim’s lucky day.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” Rapp said, cutting Isa’s hands free and then handing the penknife to him so he could do his legs.
“Did Irene Kennedy send you?” he asked while he used the blade.
“No. I work for Nicholas Ward.”
Isa, the consummate professional, kept his face a mask as he handed the knife back to Rapp.
“What would someone like you or Nicholas Ward want with a meaningless bureaucrat like me?”
<
br /> “Don’t ask questions that you already know the answer to, Bashir. I’ve got your passports, your money, and your phones. Anything else you need before we get out of here? We can use the SUV. If they’ve turned the cameras back on, all they’ll see is two men shoving a body in the back and driving away. Just what they expect.”
Isa examined Rapp’s face for a moment, undoubtedly reevaluating his loyalties in light of the night’s events. Were they to the government that had been about to kill him? Or to the American assassin standing in front of him? Neither would be the answer he’d come up with, but there weren’t a lot of options at this point.
“Not the SUV. I have a better way out.”
“Then lead on, Bash.”
Isa pulled a courier bag from the hall closet and then exited through the sliding back door. They stayed beneath the trees as they crossed his backyard and scaled the fence separating him from his neighbor to the east. The process was repeated four more times, the last of which Rapp had to give the exhausted man a push to get him over. That landed them in the backyard of a corner unit with a two-car garage. Isa entered through the side door and closed it before turning on the lights. He grabbed a set of keys off a hook on the wall and slipped behind the wheel of a Lincoln Navigator. Rapp got in the passenger side, closing his door a little more gingerly than Isa had.
“Won’t the owner hear us?” he said when Isa started the engine and used a button to open the garage.
“A few years ago, I smoothed over an incident involving his youngest daughter,” he said, starting to back out. “It’s made him a very sound sleeper.”
Rapp kept his eye on their surroundings as they cleared the gate and started up the road. The red dots on the neighborhood’s strategically placed cameras were still dark, but that wouldn’t last more than a few blocks. Still, Isa’s exit strategy would be enough to buy them some time. The government would have to review all the footage in the area, make note of all pedestrian and auto traffic, and finally track down Isa’s neighbor, who would probably already have reported the car stolen.