by Vince Flynn
These were just some of the images Hakim tried to suppress every time he attempted to sleep. Like the six well-trained men assaulting the counterterrorism facility. Hakim did not like the casual way they convinced other followers to throw their lives away. That was why he clung to the memory of his trip to Cuba and the unforgettable day he spent chasing the marlin, fighting and eventually landing the huge fish. The chasm between the two worlds, however, created a paradox. He had either been halfheartedly trying to reconcile the issue, or trying very hard to avoid it. Whichever was the case, Hakim knew he couldn’t put it off much longer.
Now is not the time, he told himself. He quieted his mind by thinking of the warm sun on his face. He remembered the humid salt air and the soft breeze, the balletic dance of the big blue fish as it sailed through the air. Hakim began drifting off to sleep, hopeful that he would someday return to Cuba. That familiar voice in his head was calling him a fool.
He had no idea if he had been asleep for two minutes or two hours. He was still on his back, his eyes closed, when he heard the heavy footsteps of someone running in the house. The door to the bedroom burst open with a thud, and Hakim, startled, sat up in complete shock. His mind, numb from its deep state of REM, couldn’t quite place the face of the burly man standing in the open doorway.
“They are coming,” the man said with genuine fear in his voice.
Hakim realized it was Ahmed, the lethargic Moroccan.
“Hurry, they are here,” he said in heavily accented English. “Grab your gun and get to your post.”
“Who is here?” Hakim asked, suddenly very alert.
“Two men with orange . . . like they put on their vehicles.”
Hakim was used to trying to translate the mangled sentences that the men often concocted, but this was a new one. “What are you trying to say?”
“Get up,” the Moroccan said with genuine panic. “Karim wants you now! Hurry!”
CHAPTER 9
LAKE ANNA, VIRGINIA
ADAMS couldn’t figure out where in the hell things had gone wrong. His plan had been perfect. He’d seen what happened to whistle-blowers. They ended up celebrated by one party and trashed by the other. Legal bills bankrupted the poor bastards while the slow workings of justice placed their life in a near-permanent state of limbo. No matter how just their accusations, they ended up pummeled. Politics in D.C. was a blood sport and whistle-blowers were cannon fodder. Adams had thought about it long and hard. It would have been like being the first guy off the very first landing barge at Omaha Beach on D-Day. They would have slaughtered him.
No, he was convinced he had plotted the right course. He knew with every fiber of his body that Rapp, and Nash and Kennedy and a bunch of others, were trampling all over the Constitution. He had been working feverishly behind the scenes to try to get the right people at Justice to stand up and take notice. Most of the deputy AGs wanted nothing to do with Rapp and Kennedy. There was a long list of people in Washington who had tried to tangle with them and so far they had proven themselves untouchable. More and more, people saw it as a career-ender. Adams thought he had finally found an ally in Senator Lonsdale. The senior senator from Missouri chaired the Judiciary Committee and shared Adams’s dislike of the CIA and its cowboy ways.
Then the bombs had shattered the civility of the capital and the mood changed yet again. Adams had gone to see Lonsdale only a few days ago, and the meeting had been a disaster. After months of working with each other, and finally finding an aggressive attorney at Justice who was brave enough to go after the criminals at Langley, she had now lost her nerve. She suggested Adams drop the issue and focus his energy on tracking down the millions in unaccounted funds the CIA had squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan. He desperately tried to get her to see that now was not the time to quit. They were so close. All Adams needed was the political clout and subpoena power of the Judiciary Committee and they could finally put Rapp and the rest of them behind bars.
Adams could not do it by himself. Despite their overall lack of brainpower, Rapp and the others were survivors and had gone to great lengths to cover their tracks. With Lonsdale abandoning him, and the rest of the Senate and the House too morally bankrupt to lift a finger, Adams saw no hope in dragging them out of the shadows and into the bright light of court. With no support from Justice or the Hill, and the whistle-blower option deemed suicidal, Adams had to find a third way. His source of inspiration was none other than Mark Felt, the now deceased assistant deputy FBI director who had brought down President Richard Nixon by selectively feeding information to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
While Felt was the template, Adams was not going to be so foolish as to allow some reporter to make millions off his bravery while he retired on his meager federal pension. He would publish a scathing exposé of the CIA, its illegal programs, and the men who ran them. He had already picked out a title—A Quest for Justice. He would write it under the pen name Jefferson. No first name, just the last. Adams had told Kenny Urness that a CIA black ops agent had come to him and was asking for help. The fictional agent wanted to shop a tell-all manuscript that would expose the CIA and its myriad illegal programs. Urness would set up a blind trust to hold the millions the novel would make, and then when things finally settled down five or seven years from now, Adams would step forward as the brave man who had brought down the fascist wing of the American government.
There would be uproar for sure, but Adams knew how to hide his tracks. He’d already purchased, with cash, a used laptop that would be destroyed once the book was finished. He’d even found a software program that would allow him to change his prose to avoid identification by writing experts. Polygraphs would be administered far and wide, but he would pass them as he always did. The lie detectors were useless against someone with his IQ. He’d had it all figured out, but despite all of the careful planning, he’d missed something.
Adams fingered the empty glass sitting on the table and silently wished they would get him another drink. The vodka was starting to wear off and that was the last thing he needed right now. Staying calm was no easy thing when you knew a man like Mitch Rapp was loitering on the other side of a steel door, and you had no way of calling for help. Despite being caught off guard, Adams had already vowed that he would make Rapp pay. He would say what he needed to say to win his release, and then he would raise hell.
No sane person would ever kill him. At least that’s what he kept telling himself. He was the inspector general of the CIA, for God’s sake. The media would dig. The Hill would demand answers. It would simply be too difficult to cover up. That’s what his highly rational brain kept telling him, but there was another voice in his head. One that was far less confident. One that had been warning him with increasing seriousness that Mitch Rapp was a man capable of extreme violence.
Adams was again trying to reassure himself that all would be fine, despite his deep forebodings, when the door opened. He recognized the lined, worn face immediately, and notwithstanding the fact that he didn’t care much for the man, he felt a huge sense of relief that he was here. Regardless of their differences, Stan Hurley was an old family friend, a covert ops legend, and maybe the only man Rapp would listen to. Adams was confident he could get the old man to sympathize with him.
“Uncle Stan,” Adams said in a hope-filled voice, “thank God you’re here.” He stood and moved forward, his arms open, ready to embrace one of the meanest cusses he’d ever known, but before he could get close enough, something hard poked him in the stomach. He froze.
“Sit down,” Hurley ordered.
Adams looked down to see the rubber tip of a cane pressed into his belly. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing . . . sit.” Hurley nudged him back and pointed at the chair.
Adams slowly retreated and took his seat. “Uncle Stan, there’d better be a hell of a good explanation for this.”
“Really?” Hurley said with skepticism. “I was about to say the same thing.”
“This is crazy; I’m the inspector general of the CIA. I can’t be kidnapped in the middle of the night and interrogated like this.”
“The fact that you’re sitting here is proof that you’re wrong on both counts.”
Adams frowned and said, “This isn’t Prague circa 1968. Neither Mitch Rapp nor anyone at the CIA, for that matter, has any right to abduct me.”
“I suppose from a purely legal standpoint you are correct.” Hurley’s admission gave Adams a shot of confidence. “You’re damn right I am. Everyone makes mistakes, but this one is a whopper.”
“It sure is.”
“Well,” Adams studied the face of his father’s best friend in a vain attempt to gauge his true intention, “as a favor to you . . . I’d be willing to look the other way on most of this, but I’m going to need some reassurances.”
“Such as?”
“For starters . . . Rapp and his band of goons need to promise that nothing like this will ever happen again.”
Hurley gripped the back of the chair with his free hand. He didn’t say anything for a long moment. His mind flashed through a movie reel of Glen Adams’s life. He hadn’t put much thought into whether he liked the kid until he was in high school, and then only because his friend was worried that his boy didn’t quite get it. As Hurley looked at the younger Adams he thought how right his friend had been to worry.
Hurley finally spoke. “And you think all of this is a mistake. You’re here through no fault of your own?”
Adams knew this was where he needed to be careful. “I know you’ve been out for a while, so I don’t expect that you’ve kept up on everything that’s been going on, but let’s just say, Rapp stuck his nose into something that doesn’t concern him.”
Hurley almost laughed, but managed to keep a straight face. “Really?” Hurley said as if he were intrigued. “Why don’t you enlighten me?”
CHAPTER 10
ADAMS’S mind was moving at light speed trying to plot the correct course that would allow him to sucker this old codger into thinking Rapp had made a monumental mistake. He couldn’t remember the exact date, but as best he could recall Hurley had been out for at least fifteen years. There was no doubt he kept tabs on certain things, but most of his old sources would have dried up. The key, he decided, was to stay as vague as possible and keep things current.
Adams averted his eyes and seemed to study the dented and scratched surface of the metal desk. “This thing I’m working on . . . I’m afraid I can’t talk about it.”
Hurley looked at him with his bloodshot but shrewd eyes. “So if I call Director Kennedy right now, she’ll tell me you were on official CIA business?”
Shaking his head, Adams replied, “She wasn’t involved in this.”
“Tell me who to call then. Give me a name.” Hurley folded his arms across his chest as if he were settling in for a long wait.
“Stan, you’re not read in on this.” Adams shifted in his chair. “Hell, you don’t work for Langley anymore. I can’t discuss this with you.”
Hurley snorted. “I know more shit about our black ops than the president, so stop wasting my time and start answering my questions, or we’re going to test that little euphorian theory of yours.”
“And what theory would that be?”
“The one about torture . . . how you like to tell all your buddies in the press that it doesn’t work. That it’s nothing more than a recruiting tool for al Qaeda.”
Adams looked dumbfounded. “Well, that’s true.”
“And how in the hell would you know?” Hurley leaned over the chair. “Have you ever interrogated someone? Had to get rough with him to save lives?”
“You know the answer to that. I’m the inspector general of the CIA.”
“What about those twenty-three months you spent in the clandestine service that you like to brag about? A whole five of them in the field. And even then the only time you left the embassy compound was to play golf or try to get laid.”
“I’m not going to relive all that with you,” Adams said with a forced smile. “Let’s just agree that there are two sides to every story.”
“Yeah . . . like the truth and then the stuff that isn’t the truth. Like your little dinner date last night.”
“What about it?”
“According to Mitch you were in the process of committing treason.”
“Mitch Rapp is a professional liar.”
“It might be a good idea if you didn’t try to make this about Mitch. You either start answering me honestly, or I’m going to bring him in here, and you know as well as I do that he cares even less about your feelings than I do.”
“Fine . . . fine,” Adams said, backpedaling. “But there’s only so much I can say.”
“What were you doing in New York last night?”
“Having dinner with an old college friend.”
“Discussing?”
Adams hesitated. He had to be careful not to catch himself in a lie. “I respect you, Stan. I always have, so I’m going to say this as politely as I can. I don’t answer to you. I don’t answer to Mitch Rapp. I answer to the president and the oversight committees on the Hill. That’s it.”
Hurley exhaled a sigh of frustration. “I don’t seem to be getting through to you.”
“I feel the same way,” Adams said in disappointment. “I understand how difficult this business is, so I’m willing to look the other way this one time, but this offer is not going to last very long. I’m tired and I have a busy day of appointments. I’ll give Rapp one chance to let me walk out of here. And I mean right now. One chance.” Adams held up his index finger.
Hurley started to laugh. “You don’t understand what’s going on, do you?”
“I understand that in about two hours people are going to start wondering where I am, and once that happens it is going to be very hard for me to look the other way on this. So, for the last time, let me go and I’ll forget all this, but I tell you,” Adams’s face flushed with anger, “if Rapp so much as looks at me the wrong way, I will bury him.”
Hurley wouldn’t have believed the man’s arrogance if he hadn’t been here to witness it. “I don’t think you’re going to be going anywhere for quite a while.”
“I’d better,” Adams felt his heart begin to race, “because what little understanding I have is quickly wasting away.”
“You’re an idiot,” Hurley said as if he were telling him his shoes were untied. “I tried my best to help you early in your career, but you really are one dumb son of a bitch.”
Adams acted as if he’d been slapped in the face. “Uncle Stan, I have done nothing wrong. I am the one trying to do the right thing.”
“If you think you’ve done nothing wrong, then I might as well shoot you in the head and get this over with.”
Adams’s mouth was agape. Here was a man he had known since birth—his father’s best friend, for Christ’s sake. Adams blurted out, “I’ve served my country. I don’t understand . . . I signed up just like you and Dad.”
“Do yourself a favor and don’t start comparing your clandestine service career to your father’s.”
“I . . .” Adams stammered, “I wasn’t about to go down with that ship of rats. They were the most corrupt bastards I’d ever met.”
“Corrupt? You talking about our fine boys down in Bogotá back in the eighties?”
“Of course I am. They should have all been thrown in jail.”
Hurley considered slapping him, but he didn’t want to make this any more personal than it already was. “This is all my fault. The other instructors at the Farm wanted to wash your ass out, but I protected you. They knew you didn’t have what it would take, and I knew it, too, but I thought I owed it to your father, so I talked you up and let you graduate.” Shaking his head in self-loathing, he added, “It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life.”
“Didn’t have what it would take?” Adams asked, some anger finally seeping into his voice. “You mean like a frontal lobotom
y? You mean the ability to ignore every ethical standard I’d ever learned? Ignore everything Congress says about what I should or shouldn’t be doing?”
“The problem with you, Glen, is that you always thought you were special, and the truth is you’re not. You were a dogshit operative. The only thing you were good for was wining and dining at the embassy parties. Anything that involved getting your hands dirty, you pissed and moaned like a little girl.”
“By getting my hands dirty you mean breaking the law?”
“You’re damn right I do. What in the hell do you think it is that the CIA is supposed to do? You think we’re supposed to obey everyone’s laws? Go ask the International Court and the U.N. and the fucking State Department for permission to find out which Colombian military officers are on the drug cartel’s payroll?”