by Vince Flynn
Again, Rapp shrugged his shoulders. “Let’s just say I’ve been in worse spots.”
“Oh…I’m sure you have, but this is different.” Wassen took a sip. “This group won’t play fair. They will stack the deck in their favor.”
“I’m sure they’ll try.”
Wassen noticed a bit of cockiness. “That doesn’t worry you?”
“I can take care of myself,” Rapp replied with a grin.
Wassen studied him for a moment; the alert eyes, behind the handsome rugged face. Sitting here in the bar he seemed like a decent fellow. Not the immoral animal some made him out to be. Although, it was not difficult to imagine that he was capable of extreme violence. “Why do I get the feeling that you know something that no one else does?”
Rapp grinned, a lopsided dimple appearing above the scar on his left jawline. “I know a lot of things that others don’t, Ralph. That’s my job.”
“But you’re supposed to pass all of those secrets on to the Intelligence Committee, aren’t you?” Wassen asked in a sarcastic tone.
“We both know that would be a mistake.”
Wassen nodded and then stared into his drink for a long moment.
Rapp watched him intently and then said, “You’re going to have to put your cards on the table. You’re not the one in a vulnerable position. I am.”
“Do you want to bet? If Babs found out I was here, she would pluck my testicles out with her pretty little French manicured fingernails.”
“That might be true,” Rapp laughed, “but no one is looking to indict you.”
“Fair enough.” Wassen took another sip and then in a slightly embarrassed tone said, “You know not all of us think you’re a monster.”
“Just your boss.”
“She can be passionate at times.”
Rapp said nothing.
“I got a call this afternoon from a friend in New York. He asked me, ‘What makes your boss think that we Americans want to extend our constitutional rights to a bunch of homophobes who recruit retarded children to be suicide bombers?’”
“Did you pass along the message?”
“No.”
“You should.”
“I might,” Wassen said without much enthusiasm. “Maybe in the morning…which, by the way, they are talking about closing the morning session.”
“I heard.” The Judiciary Committee Meeting Room was secure, and it was not uncommon for them to shut the spectators and the cameras out when they didn’t know what to expect.
“Why are you doing this?” Wassen blurted out.
“Doing what?”
“Testifying. Any sane man would take the Fifth and make it hard on them.”
“One could argue my sanity, but I think taking the Fifth makes it easy on them. It’s the game they are used to playing. Being open and forthright is something this town is not used to.”
“You’re right, there. That’s why they’re moving to close the morning session. They’re nervous you might say something that will embarrass them.”
Rapp took a sip of his beer and smiled.
“I think you’ve got something planned.”
“The only thing I have planned is to go before the committee tomorrow and answer their questions.”
Wassen nodded and then finally admitted, “I have tried to convince her to drop this whole matter.”
“I can’t see that happening.”
“No.” Wassen shook his head. “As much as I’d like to see her do it, I don’t think she will.”
“Then she and I will be locking horns in the morning.”
Wassen nodded sadly and then said, “I would like to help, if there is a way. This infighting is bad for all of us.”
“Agreed,” Rapp said, “but we appear to be pretty far apart on some major issues.”
“Which brings me to my main question—why?”
“Why what?” Rapp asked.
“Why risk your entire career on an operation like this?”
Rapp smiled. Wassen was the first person to get it. “Ralph, that’s the million-dollar question.”
CHAPTER 53
KARIM finished tying the gag around the man’s mouth and then removed his shoes. He held the tip of the knife a few inches from the man’s eyes and said, “Toenails can grow back, but toes will not.”
It was a line he had heard an Afghan use on a British paratrooper they had captured one night during a battle. He had learned much that evening watching the Afghani methodically wear the man down. He had always assumed there was a real skill to torture, but he’d had no appreciation for it until he’d seen it firsthand. There were several truisms. The first was that everyone broke. No matter how tough they were, eventually they cracked. The only time that wasn’t true was if the subject was overstressed and died prematurely of a heart attack. The other truism was that you could get anyone to say anything. In this instance Karim thought that was the more important lesson to keep in mind. The subject was fit and looked to be under thirty. His heart would be able to handle a great deal of pain.
He did not want to start out asking the man if he worked for the CIA, because eventually he would admit to it only to stop the pain. He needed to get him to flatly admit who he worked for. No leading questions.
“I have found in these situations it is best to show the subject that I am serious.” Karim looked up at Aabad, who was standing behind the man, and said, “Hold him tightly around the chest.” Karim grabbed the man’s right foot and placed the tip of the knife under the nail of the big toe. Looking into the frightened eyes of the man, he said, “I can make this one toe last for hours.”
The man began to fight. Karim held the foot firmly and jammed the tip of the knife under the nail bed. The man went stiff with pain and his eyes rolled back into his head. Fifteen seconds later he stopped fighting them and his breathing became labored.
“Take off the gag,” Karim ordered Aabad. After it was removed he asked the man, “Your name, please. The one you used when you were a Ranger.”
“Tony…Tony Jones.”
Karim smiled. “I don’t believe you, but we will check.” He stood and grabbed a mobile phone from a shelf, and he dialed a number and then gave the person on the other end the name.
“Put the gag back on,” Karim ordered.
“No,” the man screamed. “You haven’t even found out if I’m lying to you.”
“I know you are lying.” Karim smiled.
“No, I’m not,” the man pleaded.
“Really…tell me then why you were trying to get into the storage room across the hall.”
“I…” the man stammered, “was looking around…that’s all. I swear. It’s my job to know what’s going on around here.”
Karim nodded for Aabad to put the gag back on. The man struggled and fought him every step of the way. When it was secure, Karim stuck the tip of the knife back under the nail and slid it back and forth. The man bucked and writhed in pain. Karim waited for it to pass and then asked him, “Who do you work for?”
With the gag off the man sputtered, “I’m a carpenter. I work for myself.” He craned his head around and said, “Aabad, please tell him. You know me.”
“He doesn’t know you,” Karim laughed. “No one here really knows you, do they?”
“That is not true.”
“Yes it is.” Karim held up the knife. A drop of the man’s blood ran down the silver blade. “I will ask you one more time, who you work for. If you lie to me the toe comes off. Now…who do you work for?”
The man’s eyes were filled with fear. “I told you who I work for. I work for myself. I don’t know why you’re doing this.”
Karim gave the signal and the gag was slipped back on. It took all their combined strength to hold him down this time. Karim sat on the man’s legs and when he had him reasonably still he pressed down on the big toe of the right foot. The man jerked and the cut was imperfect, the blade slicing through most of the big toe as well as the one next to it. The man
’s screams were muffled by the gag, but he was writhing in pain. Karim waited for him to lie still for a moment, and then he quickly cut the remaining tendons on the big toe. Things continued like this for thirty more minutes and two more toes, until the man, sobbing uncontrollably, uttered the acronym that Karim had been looking for.
“The CIA.”
It was a strange victory. He had broken him, but he had also confirmed their worst fears. “Who is your handler?” Karim asked, his mouth only a few inches from the man’s ear. The gag was off. The man no longer had the energy to fight. He hesitated, so Karim jammed the tip of the knife into one of the stumps on the right foot. The man started to scream, but Aabad was right there with a towel. He stuffed it in the man’s face and waited for him to stop.
“Who is your handler?” Karim repeated.
“Mike…” the man’s voice trailed off.
“Mike who?” Karim asked while grabbing him by the shoulders.
“Mike Nash.”
Karim let him go. It was a name he knew. Al-Qaeda had key sources inside both Saudi Intelligence and Pakistani Intelligence. As part of his plan, Karim had asked for the flowchart of American counterterrorism operations. He wanted to know who he was up against and how they would respond to his attacks. He also wanted the ability to turn the hunter into the hunted.
“Mike Nash,” Karim said to the man. “Former U.S. Marine, married, four children, lives in Arlington or Alexandria, I can’t remember which one. Is that the same Mike Nash you work for?” The man did not answer. “The same Mike Nash who reports to Mitch Rapp?” he asked in a lighthearted voice.
The man looked up at him with confused eyes and said, “Who are you?”
“Ah,” Karim said in a happy voice, “you don’t know how pleasing it is to me that you have no idea who I am. Now let’s get back to what we were talking about.”
Over the next hour Karim coaxed as much information out of the man as he dared. He knew there would be protocols in place for an operative like this, but since he had no way of checking them, he wasn’t sure it was worth pursuing. Instead, he focused on what the man had discovered at the mosque and what he had already passed on to his handlers. What he learned was that nothing of any value had been relayed. Indeed, the only thing that had been passed along was the fact Aabad had been shooting his mouth off that something big was going to be happening. That and the delivery of the supplies that had been placed under lock and key. Karim questioned him for thirty minutes on this one point alone. When he was done he felt extremely confident that the CIA had nothing more than suspicions.
Karim left the room and took a long moment to make sure he had everything figured out. Was it worth it to push it a little more? That was the question he kept asking himself. It was now nearly 1:00 in the morning. He doubted the man had a midnight check-in, but even if he did, this Mike Nash was likely asleep. Nothing would happen until morning, Karim decided, so he called Hakim using one of the disposable phones and ordered him to remove the back three benches from the van and return to the mosque with two of the men.
There were twenty-five cardboard boxes, each one weighing forty pounds. They were sealed and had USAID stenciled in blue on the sides. The contents of the boxes were courtesy of the U.S. government, but they could hardly be considered humanitarian aid. Each box was loaded with U.S. military C-4 plastic explosives. The shipment had been lost in Kuwait and ended up on the black market. Karim ordered Aabad to unlock the storage room and have his men begin placing the boxes on the delivery elevator. Hakim arrived twenty minutes later. His lack of enthusiasm for the change in plan was apparent from the moment he set foot in the door.
He came down to the basement and said, “We need to leave right now.”
Karim smiled and calmly said, “We are fine. I have thoroughly interrogated him. I will explain it all to you later. Right now we need to load the boxes into the van.” Karim pointed at the delivery elevator, which already had eight boxes loaded.
“But they will come looking for him,” Hakim said as he nervously moved about.
“Yes, eventually, but I do not expect them before morning. Now, don’t argue with me,” he said in a surprisingly happy tone. “Let’s get moving.”
The first load of twelve cases was sent up, as more boxes were brought down the hall. It was like a fire brigade, with four men in the basement, passing the boxes from the room, down the hall, and onto the rusted metal platform of the elevator. Then up they went and into the back of the van. With seven people helping, they had the van loaded in less than fifteen minutes.
As they were preparing to leave, Aabad inserted himself between Karim and Hakim and in an extremely agitated state asked, “What should we do with him?” He pointed back down through the hole in the sidewalk where the delivery elevator was descending.
The him, they had found out, was a twenty-nine-year-old American named Chris Johnson. He had done two tours in Afghanistan and another in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division. After his last tour he was recruited by Mike Nash to join a counterterrorism group within the CIA. There was actually no question what would be done with him, it was simply who would do it.
“Kill him,” Karim said, as if he was ordering him to move another box.
Aabad looked at the ground and began mumbling to himself as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I…” he started to say, and then stopped.
“You can do it,” Hakim hissed as he looked at Karim.
Karim looked from one end of the block to the other and thought they were pushing their luck. Now was not the time to stand around and debate the issue. To Hakim he said, “Wait for me in the van.” To Aabad, he said, “Follow me.”
Karim walked back into the mosque and down to the storage room. He looked at the bloody prisoner on the floor. He had already inflicted a great deal of pain on the man, but he still didn’t feel it was enough. He decided he would not simply put him out of his misery. Struck by a sudden inspiration, he said to Aabad, “Do you have a video camera?”
“Yes, in the office.”
“Get it.” He ordered.
Aabad went down the hall and returned ten seconds later with the camera in hand.
“Turn it on and make sure you do not get my face.” Karim pulled the hood on his sweatshirt over his head and turned his back to Aabad. “Is it recording?”
“Yes.”
“Move in for a close-up after I’m done.” Karim reached down and pulled Johnson’s head back. He looked into the agent’s tired eyes and said, “You are a deceiver, and you have insulted all of Islam. There will be a special place in hell for you.”
Karim placed the blade against the throat just beneath the Adam’s apple and drew the knife across the thin layer of flesh. The cut opened up pink, and then white, and then crimson as the blood began pouring out in a sheet. Karim stood upright and watched Johnson begin to choke on his own blood. It took a good thirty seconds for the agent to submit to his own death, and then he lay still on the blood-soaked floor.
Karim wiped the blood off the blade with what was left of the man’s torn shirt and then said to Aabad, “Wrap him up in a prayer rug, bring him to an area where no one will see you, douse him in gasoline, and burn him.”
CHAPTER 54
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
NASH woke up to the sound of his beeping watch at 6:30. He slid out of bed without any thought of the night before or anything else, for that matter. He knew if he did not keep his head down and his mind focused he would never get out the door. The shorts, socks, shirt, and long-sleeved pullover were sitting on the overstuffed chair in the corner of the bedroom where he had placed them before bed. He picked up the stack and quietly slid downstairs. In the mudroom he stripped off his sleep pants and put on his running gear. After a glass of cold tap water he stopped by the back door and opened the cupboard at the top of his cubby. On the top shelf sat a black biometric gun safe. He placed his right thumb over the glass eye, and a second later the safe beeped and the door p
opped open. There were three pistols and two extra magazines of ammunition for each.
Nash grabbed the Glock 23 off the top shelf, put it in his right hand, and with his left hand pulled back on the slide. He looked down and confirmed that the chamber was empty. He then yanked the slide all the way back and put one round in the tube. That left him nine more in the grip. He stowed the compact .40-caliber pistol in his fanny pack with his keys and one of his phones, which he didn’t bother to turn on. Nash turned the alarm off and then turned it back on before leaving and locking the door again. He did all of this without putting any thought into it. “Good habits breed success,” was what his high school wrestling coach had always said. In the Corps, the mantra was, “Discipline is what gives us the edge.” Now in this next stage of life it was Rapp telling him flatly, “You fuck up one time and you’re dead.”
Nash hit the sidewalk running. There were only two cars parked on the broad tree-lined street and they were both familiar. The Jeep Wrangler belonged to the Gilsdorfs, and the Honda Accord belonged to the Krauses. He headed for Zachary Taylor Park. There and back was three miles, and if he couldn’t do it in less than twenty minutes it would probably ruin his day. Right up until the explosion, he consistently did it in under eighteen minutes.
Nash ran for a lot of reasons, but more than any other, it was the clarity of thought it gave him. He’d made his toughest decisions during runs. He’d solved some of the biggest problems he’d faced, or at least figured out ways to get out of some pretty tough jams. This morning was no different. As his feet got lighter and he hit his stride it was like the beat of a drum in his head. First and foremost on his mind was Rory. The pain Nash felt over not being there for his family hurt every bit as bad as a piece of hot shrapnel slicing through his skin. Some things were going to have to change. He wasn’t sure what, but he did know that Rory needed him in his corner. He knew his wife well enough to know that despite what he had told her last night, she would strut that pretty little ass of hers into school and try to smooth things over.