by Vince Flynn
“No, she’s not with him.” There was no way Kennedy could lie. As odious as this investigation was, it was authorized at the highest level. “She’s staying with me.”
“Excuse me?”
“Was I not clear?”
“You kept this secret?” His eyes lit up at the potential chink in her armor.
“Just because you don’t know something doesn’t mean it’s a secret, Joel. Claudia told me she and Mitch needed to get away and asked me to keep her daughter so her school year wouldn’t be interrupted.”
“But you’re still going with the story that you have no idea where they are and no way to contact them. So, if the little girl gets sick or falls down a well, you can’t get in touch with her mother?”
“I have email addresses for both her and Mitch. I’m happy to share them with you.”
He leaned forward in his chair and stared directly into her eyes. “You know that I’m coming for you, too, right, Irene?”
“Of course I do. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for a meeting.”
CHAPTER 44
Franschhoek
South Africa
WHY are we just sitting here?” Joel Wilson said. “We should be following them in.”
Nassar watched the scene through the windshield of the SUV they’d hired. On the surface it wasn’t much different from Wilson’s breach of Mitch Rapp’s home, but beneath the surface the differences were considerable. The men working to open the gate on Claudia Dufort’s house weren’t a well-trained FBI SWAT team. They were a random collection of his own people, local police, and men supplied by Mullah Halabi.
It was a dangerously unpredictable mix, but it was Halabi’s people he was most concerned about. While they were reasonably disciplined by terrorist standards, the contrast between them and his General Intelligence Directorate operatives was still rather stark. It made sense to limit Wilson’s exposure to the ISIS men as much as possible.
He glanced over at the impatient American and felt his fears diminish. The man had eyes, but they were glassy with a fervor that Nassar normally equated with Islam. While those men saw only God and their duty to Him, Wilson saw only Rapp and the revenge that was so close at hand.
“The presence of the African police creates an unstable situation, Joel. And the chances of Mr. Rapp hiding at the home of a woman he’s known to be involved with is far-fetched in the extreme. This is a job for soldiers, not generals.”
As if to punctuate his words, two shots rang out. Wilson went for the door handle, but Nassar grabbed his shoulder and activated his headset. “Report.”
“Two guard dogs,” came the reply in his earpiece. “We’re clear.”
“Copy. The compound is secured, Joel. We can go in now.”
“What about those shots?”
“It was nothing.”
Nassar pulled through the gate, parking in a courtyard overflowing with palm trees and bougainvillea. Mullah Halabi’s men were near the front door in what seemed to be a wary détente with Nassar’s team. Wilson was blind to the obvious tension, instead focusing on irrelevant matters that so easily distracted Americans. In this case, it was the two dead guard dogs and the local policeman pinning a terrified African woman against a tree. When one of them slapped her, Wilson jumped out and ran in their direction.
“Stop!”
Nassar followed, keeping Halabi’s men in his peripheral vision as Wilson pushed the policeman aside.
“Who are you?” he said to the woman.
Her words came out in an unintelligible jumble, so the policeman spoke for her. “She says she works here. That she lives in the servants’ quarters at the back.”
“Is there any reason to believe that’s not true?”
The man shrugged.
“Calm down,” Wilson said. “We’re not here to hurt you and you’re not under arrest. Now tell me. Where is Claudia Dufort?”
“I . . . I don’t know. She hasn’t been here in many months. I care for the house.” She looked past him for a moment at the dead animals lying in the grass. “And the dogs.”
He pulled out a photo and held it up to her. “Do you know this man?”
She nodded. “Mitch. He’s an American.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“When he came to help get Claudia and Anna’s things.”
“So months ago.”
She nodded.
“How do you communicate with them? Do you have a phone number?”
“No. An email address.”
“Okay. Go back to your quarters and stay there until I tell you to come out.”
She rushed off and he turned to Nassar. “Her story matches what we already know—that Dufort and her daughter have been living with Rapp in the U.S.”
“Agreed. Questioning this woman would be a waste of time. Rapp wouldn’t reveal anything to a servant.”
He followed Wilson into the house and a brief search turned up an office at the back. It was only three meters square and contained little more than a desk, a computer, and a single chair. Wilson immediately sat and turned on the computer. Not surprisingly, it requested a password. He swore quietly and rebooted it from a thumb drive.
“Your computer experts still haven’t been able to access her tablet,” Nassar pointed out. “What makes you think you can get into this?”
“People are funny,” he said. “They feel safe in their homes. So while they secure the hell out of their phones and tablets, they tend to be lazy with their desktops. They want it to be easy, they want their kids to be able to get on, and they figure no one will ever have physical access to it.”
Nassar riffled through a stack of papers but found nothing more than notes from the girl’s school and receipts for inconsequential household products. Finally, he wandered back out into the main part of the house as his and Halabi’s men tore the space apart. Normally it wasn’t his practice to get personally involved in these kinds of operations, but there was little choice. His life depended on the American FBI agent finding Rapp. Every minute that passed without success increased the danger.
After about thirty minutes a shrill laugh filtered through the home, reaching him as he passed through Dufort’s wrecked kitchen. He jogged back to the office and found Wilson grinning like an idiot at the computer screen.
“I found her daughter’s birthday on the calendar and reversed it for the password,” he said. “I hope she’s one hell of a piece of tail, because she isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.”
“Is there anything of value on the hard drive?”
“I’m less interested in the drive than the email,” Wilson said. Nassar watched as he searched for all the correspondence with Rapp.
“Okay, let’s start on the date we know they left the U.S.,” Wilson said. “Yeah, there’s an increase in email frequency, so they may not be together. Or at least they haven’t been for the entire time.”
“I doubt Mitch Rapp would discuss something as sensitive as his location on a commercial account,” Nassar said.
“No,” Wilson replied, opening and closing successive individual emails. “But he might not have to. Don’t give this asshole too much credit, Aali. He’s not an intel guy. He’s just a killer.” The FBI man suddenly jabbed a finger into the screen. “Right there!”
“What?”
“It’s a bunch of bullshit about Anna, but then look what he says. ‘It hit ninety three degrees today but the sun finally went down a half an hour ago.’ ”
Wilson dialed his phone and put in an earpiece. “Yeah, it’s me. September twenty-seven. Where in the world did the temp top out around ninety-three and the sun set around three forty-five GMT. Uh-huh. Yeah, I can wait.”
He continued scrolling through emails, closing most within a few seconds, but occasionally minimizing one instead.
“Central Africa? You’re sure? Are you going to narrow it down? Okay, I’ve got something else for you. On October fifth, there was audible shelling in the morning. Yeah, it uses the word ‘shelling’ specifically, so some kind of active war zone. Right . . .”
Nassar left the man to his work and exited the house, crossing the lawn to a stand of trees near the rear wall. He glanced around him to make certain no one was within earshot and then dialed his sat phone.
“Peace be upon you, Director,” Mullah Halabi said.
“And you.” He deeply resented having to check in with the man, but it would be unwise to refuse the request.
“I understand you’re at the home of one of Rapp’s women. Is the search proving fruitful?”
Nassar’s jaw clenched, but it was hardly a surprise that Halabi’s men were reporting back to him. Having the volatile mullah tracking his movements so closely, though, unnerved him. As with Rapp, it was often hard to distinguish between the hunter and the hunted.
“We believe that he may be in central Africa. We’re working now to pinpoint a location.”
“Excellent. I have many devoted men in the region. I’ll be happy to make them available to you.”
Nassar wanted to reject the offer, but there was no practical way to do so. Pointing out that the ISIS leader’s African followers would be unpredictable and poorly trained would be an insult. And admitting that their presence made him uneasy would make the mullah question what he had to hide.
“That’s most generous.”
“Of course, Aali. My resources are always at the disposal of my loyal disciples.”
Nassar bristled at being lumped in with the illiterate cannon fodder that made up Halabi’s cult of personality, but he did nothing that would hint at his displeasure. The ISIS leader was a critical tool in the subjugation of the Middle East and would have to be deferred to until an opportunity to replace him arose.
Joel Wilson appeared around the edge of the house and began rushing toward him.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to go,” Nassar said respectfully. “The American FBI man is coming.”
“May Allah be with you,” he said, and then severed the connection.
“I’ve got something!” Wilson shouted, showing no interest in who Nassar had been talking to.
“Really? That’s surprising, Joel. We’ve been here less than an hour.”
In fact, it seemed quite incredible. While Mitch Rapp undoubtedly had a gift for violence, it was likely that Wilson was underestimating his intellect. Strength, speed, and steel nerves alone couldn’t explain the trail of dead the man had left over the last twenty years. Was Rapp capable of making obvious mistakes?
The FBI agent smoothed out a single sheet of paper on an outdoor table and motioned him over. Nassar looked down at the crude map of Africa and the various markings on it.
“The red circles indicate everywhere our satellites picked up significant explosions on the day Rapp talked about shelling. Combining that with the temperature and sunset data gives us a ninety percent probability that they’re in South Sudan.”
“Impressive, but that’s an entire country.”
“I’m not done,” Wilson said. “There was active fighting in a number of places in that country, but he mentioned in a later email that he was getting provisions from the main market and that it was more trouble than it was worth to drive. That means he’s close enough to a main market to walk and hand carry food back to where he’s staying. Then he made his fatal slip. He called the place he was staying ‘the church.’ ”
“And that’s enough information for you to locate him?”
“I’m still cross-referencing with MI6, but I think there’s a good chance. ‘Main market’ suggests a town big enough to have more than one, which rules out a number of villages with shelling close enough to hear. My gut says we’re talking about Juba.”
“And the church?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’m guessing my people will have a bead on it before we go wheels up. How many nonoperational churches can there be a few minutes’ walk from the central market?”
Nassar nodded, examining the map. “Excellent work, Joel. I was always confident that you were the man for this job, but now I have no doubts at all.”
All true, but something in the back of Nassar’s mind remained suspicious of the man’s success. It was bordering on being too easy. And this suggested two scenarios. First, that Rapp would be aware that his emails to his woman could be accessed and used to locate him, in which case he was already a thousand miles from Juba. Or, second, that those emails were the bait for an elaborate trap.
Of course, Nassar recognized that it was also possible that he was just being paranoid, but it wasn’t something he was willing to bet his life on. Wilson’s life, though, was of less importance. While it would be inconvenient to lose him, he was hardly irreplaceable. And his death at Rapp’s hands would do a great deal to further the narrative Nassar had been crafting.
“I was speaking to the king earlier, and I’ve been recalled to Riyadh on an urgent matter,” he lied. “I tried to explain to His Majesty that I was needed here, but he wouldn’t be deterred. My men and my plane are at your disposal, Joel. I’ll take a commercial flight home and return as soon as I can.”
CHAPTER 45
Juba
South Sudan
THE darkness in the alley went from deep shadow to impenetrable darkness and back again every few feet, but Kent Black kept inching forward. Juba’s electricity was out again, and all he had to work with was a few battery-powered lamps glowing in distant windows.
It wasn’t the safest time to be skulking around town, but the possibility of being jumped by a bunch of drunk rebels wasn’t why he wanted to get the hell out of there. All that mattered was that he got back to the safari camp before Rapp figured out he was gone.
Black came to the mouth of the alley and was able to make out the vague shape of the church’s listing steeple against the stars. It was only another seventy-five yards to the east pedestrian gate, then five minutes inside and then he was out. Easy, right?
One of the men Abdo had sent to watch the place was sitting in an open jeep across the street, but he was dead asleep with an AK clutched to his chest like some kind of security blanket. Based on his age, he’d probably only recently traded up.
The next fifty yards went pretty well. Quiet, good cover, and no more of Abdo’s men. The gods of war had taken pity on him.
Or so he’d thought. When the church’s east wall came into view, he saw a lone figure standing next to the gate. The sheer size of him and the slightly crooked stance acquired when a bullet had crushed his right femur a few years back made him easy to identify. Barnabas Malse.
Black froze. He’d had some training in hand-to-hand combat in the army, but that had been a long time ago. As far as he was concerned, getting any closer than three hundred yards to a target was just plain stupid. If God had wanted people to fight with knives, he wouldn’t have given them sniper rifles.
Skirting the building next to him, Black managed to leave the glow of a distant fire behind. He was wearing tattered fatigues and had smeared his face with dirt in an effort to blend in, but the effect was marginal. With a little backlighting, though, it might get the job done.
He shook out his shoulders to loosen up and then started walking casually toward Malse. The man separated himself from the wall he was leaning against but didn’t make a move for his sidearm.
If there was one thing the African didn’t lack, it was confidence. And that conviction didn’t just come from his freakish bulk and the terror he instilled in everyone for five hundred miles around. He was also in the habit of kidnapping and eating albino children. When Black had first heard the stories, he’d thought they were just a bullshit legend. It turned out that they were true. Malse believed that his unusual diet made
him invincible in battle.
The African said something and Black just pointed to his ear in a way that suggested he couldn’t hear. It wouldn’t register as being unusual. A significant percentage of the rebel population was about half deaf from the constant shooting and explosions.
His heart felt like it was trying to fight its way out of his chest by the time he got within ten feet of the man. Malse still hadn’t recognized him or made a move for his weapon, but he did speak again. Black nodded vigorously at whatever the fuck he’d said, hoping to draw attention away from the knife appearing from his pocket. When he got inside of five feet, he lunged, driving the eight-inch blade into the man’s stomach. Malse looked surprised, but other than that the knife didn’t seem to make much of an impression. He grabbed Black by the front of his fatigues and lifted him off the ground, throwing him into the church’s perimeter wall. The former Ranger managed to keep his head from impacting but still hit hard before dropping gracelessly to the ground. He’d barely managed to get to his knees when Malse grabbed him again—this time with one hand on his throat and the other on his thigh. Black found himself being lifted again but managed to grab hold of the hilt of the knife protruding from Malse’s stomach on the way up. He yanked it sideways, opening a long slit that poured blood down the front of the African’s grimy blue jeans. He still didn’t seem to notice.
This time Black hit the wall upside down and almost seven feet up, impacting the ground a moment later face-first. He saw Malse coming for him again but was too dazed to do anything but lie there wondering if the magic really worked. If all those murdered children really had made him immortal.
A human figured appeared from the shadows behind the African and Black squinted at it, trying to make sense of what was happening. A hand clamped over Malse’s nose and mouth and he was dragged out of sight. After that, there was a quiet crunching sound and then nothing.
Black tried to push himself to his feet, failing the first time and then managing to regain enough equilibrium to succeed on his second try. When he did, the dark figure was standing in front of him, backlit as he had been before. Not Malse. Way too small and straight. Still fuzzy, there was nothing Black could do when the man grabbed him by the hair and dragged him into the same dark alcove he’d dragged the African.