The old man appeared. He stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind him. He stood there for a five count, his left hand still holding the doorknob, his chin slowly sinking until it rested on his chest. It was a posture of contemplation. He was a man trying to gather his thoughts before he decided what to do. He held the pose for just a second longer and then with a shake of his head, he bent over and grabbed the feet of the dead Russian. The first tug did nothing. The second tug moved the body maybe a few inches. The third tug was more of an all-out yank. The old man really leaned into it and the body started sliding across the worn linoleum floor.
Rapp matched him step for step, with little worry that he would be detected. The old man was preoccupied in thought and deed and probably mostly deaf from working an espresso machine his entire life. They retreated almost to the end of the hallway, where the old man gave up and dropped the Russian’s lifeless feet. They thudded against the floor, one of the shoes falling partially off. The old man swore and bent over, placing his hands on his knees. He made no effort to put the shoe back on. He was too exhausted. He stayed where he was breathing heavily and cursing to himself.
Rapp silently slid the pistol into the inside pocket of his jacket and extracted a folding knife from his belt. With one hand, he opened the knife and took a step forward. He hovered for a second, waiting for the old man to make his next predictable move. When he finally stood, Rapp lunged forward, clamping his right hand around the man’s mouth while pulling him up and nearly off his feet. The knife hand came around and Rapp pressed the flat edge of the blade against the man’s throat.
“Don’t make a sound,” Rapp whispered, his mouth only inches from the man’s left ear, “or I’ll slit your throat.”
13
R app had no idea how involved the old man was in all of this. He’d had ample time to think about it over the last day. He had obviously tipped off Gazich about the Russians and now he was helping him again, but this was not necessarily proof that he had been involved in what had happened in America back in October. Not by a long shot. Helping get rid of the bodies was in his own self-interest, regardless of any involvement with Gazich. He had to run a business, and in a resort town like Limassol, a few dead Russians found on your property could spell real trouble.
Then again, he could be Gazich’s business partner. Complicit in every action. Maybe he was the one who negotiated the contracts. Almost anything was possible, and until Rapp had proof, one way or the other, the old man would live. In no way, shape, or form was Mitch Rapp the picture of mental health, but through it all—the killings, the torturing, violence piled upon cruelty—he’d managed to stay relatively sane. The answer lay in the fact that he was different from the men, and yes, the occasional woman he hunted.
Many of them killed for an idea. Often, the idea was a perversion of Islam. These were all men. No women were allowed to join their crusade of intolerance. Yes, occasionally the Palestinians had used female suicide bombers, and so had the Chechens, but they were few. Others killed for a paycheck, like Gazich. Some of them, the ones who did their job with precision and avoided harming innocents, Rapp was indifferent toward. Gazich was not one of them. What he had done crossed the line by leaps and bounds. He was a terrorist not an assassin. He proved that when he set off the car bomb in Georgetown killing nineteen people, seriously wounding another thirty-four, and ruining the lives of who knew how many more. And who was the target in this case? Was it a corrupt arms dealer, a narco trafficker, a sponsor of terrorism? No, the target was two political candidates. And what was their crime? Did they preach death to Islam and the Arab world? Did they advocate the wholesale murder of every Palestinian? No. They did no such thing.
That was what the mullahs and clerics preached in places like Iran and Saudi Arabia. Death to America, the Great Satan. Death to Israel. Nuke the entire Zionist state and push the infidels into the ocean. These two liberal politicians, on the other hand, preached tolerance and acceptance every chance they got. They advocated real statehood for Palestine and sincere respect for religious diversity. And what did they get for it? They got some crazy Islamic fascist like Osama and his ilk putting a price tag on their heads.
Rapp still recalled the anger he’d felt while sitting in his hotel room in Calcutta months before. Sky News showed footage of the crater left by the car bomb. Rapp had been up and down that street at least a thousand times. From the size of the hole alone he knew it had been a powerful bomb. The death count was sure to be high. The next set of images provided by Sky News came from Muslim cities across the Middle East and beyond. They were all a slight variation on the same theme. Young men clogged the streets. Again, no women. American flags burned, Molotov cocktails were thrown at U.S. embassies, cars were torched, and men chanted, cheered, and danced. All in celebration that the Great Satan had been dealt a grievous blow.
The fact that so many could so brazenly celebrate such a barbarous act snapped Rapp back to reality. This clash of cultures trivialized his pain and anguish. The images on the TV that evening in Calcutta crystallized for him what was at stake. The only time you ever saw anything like this in America was when Detroit won an NBA title. And they were merely celebrating their home team’s victory. Not the indiscriminate destruction of human life.
The old man would live. That was how Rapp was different from Gazich. He didn’t simply eliminate innocent people because they were in the way of his objective. Yes, Rapp was capable of restraint when the situation called for it, but he was equally capable of committing acts of sheer, ruthless violence. Gazich would die. But before he drew his last breath he would talk.
“Down on your knees,” Rapp whispered.
He kept his right hand on the man’s mouth and the knife at his throat as the man got down on one knee and then the other.
“I’m going to take my hand off your mouth,” Rapp whispered, “but the knife is going to stay at your throat.” Rapp took the point of the knife and jabbed the tip into the fleshy skin just beneath the old man’s Adam’s apple. The steel point slid through the first two layers of skin, drawing a drop of blood.
“That’s your voice box. Keep your mouth shut until I tell you to open it. If I see your lips begin to move, the knife goes all the way in, and I promise you whatever it was that you were going to say is going to die right there in your throat. Nod if you understand.”
The old man did and Rapp decreased the pressure on the tip of the knife.
Rapp could feel the man breathing heavily through his nose. “Listen, I’m not going to kill you unless you give me a reason to. Just relax and take a few deep breaths.”
Keeping the knife at his throat, Rapp used his right hand to reach down and grab a towel that was stuffed into one of the pockets at the front of the old man’s apron. Rapp looked at it before bunching one end into a ball with his fist.
“Open your mouth wide,” Rapp whispered.
The old man did as he was told and Rapp stuffed a third of the towel into his mouth. He then made the man lay down flat on his stomach and put his hands behind his back. Rapp cut the long ties off the apron and used them to hog-tie the man’s ankles and wrists together. When he was secured, Rapp stowed the knife and drew the pistol.
Rapp showed the gun to the old man and whispered, “Any noise at all and I’ll shoot you. Don’t try to bang your feet against the wall or roll over. Otherwise you’re a dead man. Do you understand?”
The old man nodded.
“How many people are in the office? Blink your answer.”
The old man’s eyelids opened and closed twice.
“Deckas and the big Russian?”
The old man nodded his head up and down.
“Is Deckas interrogating the Russian?”
Again he nodded.
“All right, sit tight.” Rapp patted the old man’s head. “This whole thing will be over in a minute.”
Rapp sprang to his feet and started down the hallway, gliding along the right edge. Gazich would have use
d a silenced weapon. Most likely subsonic rounds, probably nine millimeter. The walls were old. Probably lattice covered with plaster. They would definitely stop a nine-millimeter round, subsonic or not. Maybe even a forty-five. Rapp again tried to visualize the layout of the office. Desk in the middle on the left and a couple of chairs or a couch on the right. Gazich would be standing and that meant he would have minimal cover. The Russian would not be a problem. He was either immobile from gunshot wounds or tied up. If Gazich was interrogating him he had probably switched to a knife. Options increased and techniques varied with a knife.
Rapp stopped one step short of the door. His mind was made up on a plan of action. It would be lightning fast. One, two, three, four. He listened for a moment. It sounded like Gazich was asking a question. The Russian pleaded with him in broken English, his voice much louder and more fearful than that of his inquisitor. Rapp took all of this as a good sign.
Reaching out, he placed his right hand on the doorknob and waited a second. As soon as he heard Gazich begin to speak, he twisted the old brass knob and flung the door inward with a good push. He was ninety percent sure Gazich was on the right, but he had to make sure he wasn’t on the left first. Rapp hugged the door frame as his left hand and gun filled the void of the open doorway. The door sailed past ninety degrees, revealing the edge of the desk exactly where Rapp thought it would be. The gun came straight up and locked in a level position. The door continued its arc, swinging inward on its hinges, revealing an empty desk. Rapp started swinging the gun back to his right. At the same time he shifted his weight to his left while hugging the door frame and leaned just enough into the open doorway so his left eye could take in nearly the entire right side of the room while exposing only a fraction of his body.
Gazich came into view first. He was standing sideways, the Russian was in a chair directly in front of him, but Rapp wasn’t worried about the Russian. Rapp’s eye was locked on Gazich. A literal tunnel. His gun not quite there yet. Ninety-nine percent of his focus on the threat. He heard the door bang hard against something as his eye searched Gazich’s hands. The Bosnian was turning toward him, his hands still at his side. He was expecting the old man. Some recess of Rapp’s brain registered that the door had not opened 180 degrees against the wall so it had probably hit a bookcase or some other piece of furniture. The black finish of a gun and its long silencer against the faded denim of Gazich’s pants caught Rapp’s eye. The elevation of Rapp’s left arm dropped immediately. Gun seeking out gun. A tenth of a second later Rapp squeezed the trigger, letting loose the first shot.
Gazich stood a mere fourteen feet away. The round caught him square in the back of his right hand, plowing its way through flesh, crucial tendons, and then bone. His hand clenched for a millisecond and then opened like a clamp with a broken spring. The brain made none of these decisions. It was simply mechanical failure. The gun dropped free-falling to the floor, but before it hit, a second round caught Gazich in the right knee and then a third in the left knee.
For two seconds time stood still. Nothing moved. Rapp waited, still concealed by the door frame, and watched the same way you would watch the demolition of a building. That strange moment of disbelief in the immediate aftermath. When the explosive charges have just blown out all the support columns, yet the building still hangs there for a second or two defying gravity. And then physics takes over and everything comes crashing to the ground.
Gazich’s legs wobbled. His arms began to move away from his body in an effort to provide balance, but balance wasn’t the problem. The problem was two shattered kneecaps. It was structural. He picked up his right leg to widen his stance and when he put it back down the limb folded like a cheap rental chair at a backyard wedding. Gazich went down hard, somehow managing to get his left hand out in front of him to prevent a face plant. He ended up on his side, his left hand stretched out a mere four inches from the pistol he had dropped.
Rapp stayed right where he was, completely aware of the proximity of Gazich’s hand to the weapon. He watched as Gazich’s eyes moved from the pistol to the stranger in the doorway. Rapp knew what was going through his mind, so he stepped partially into the doorway and started to lower his weapon. His eyes were locked on Gazich’s. Rapp’s pistol almost got to a point where it was perpendicular with the floor, but he saw the fingers on Gazich’s hand open and reach for the weapon. Rapp’s pistol came up and a fourth shot spat from the end of the silencer. It bored a hole through the center of the assassin’s palm before it ever reached the gun. One, two, three, four. Just like Rapp thought it would be.
Rapp stepped into the room and kept his gun trained on Gazich’s head. He walked over, placed his right foot on the gun and slid it back toward the doorway. Gazich started to move.
“Keep your hands away from your body, or I’ll put a bullet in your head.”
The Russian took all of this as a sign of his salvation, and exclaimed, “Thank god you are here.”
Rapp looked at him with a furrowed brow. The guy’s left ear had been partially carved away from his head and the tip of his nose looked like a filleted lobster tail. Blood cascaded down his face and onto his white shirt.
“Untie me, my friend.”
Rapp didn’t move.
“Untie me right now,” the Russian demanded.
Rapp leveled the pistol at the Russian’s groin. All three green dots in a row. “Shut the fuck up, or I’ll blow your balls off.”
14
G roin injuries could be really messy. Lots of blood, and lots of pain. Since the Russian could barely keep his mouth shut as it was, Rapp assumed the lout would scream like a stuck pig if he pierced one of his testicles with a ball of lead. Rapp was not one to make empty threats, and the Russian’s inability to keep his mouth shut and follow a simple order was pushing him to the brink. He was one of these irritants who liked to think out loud. The type who gives a running narrative of the obvious. He alternated between muttering to himself and attempting to bribe Rapp with riches, his volume increasing with each passing moment.
Rapp was on the phone with Coleman, giving him a quick situation report. They were less than a minute out. Rapp told him to have Brooks drop him off in front. If anyone tried to stop him from going upstairs, he should tell them he was going to meet Alexander Deckas from Aid Logistics Inc. The Russian jabbered during the entire conversation.
Rapp had already frisked Gazich, and now he was rifling through the assassin’s desk as he finished giving Coleman instructions. Everything was going fairly well except the Russian. The man simply wouldn’t shut up. Finally, Coleman asked Rapp who was making the racket. Rapp reached his boiling point. He raised his pistol and squeezed the trigger. A round spat from the thick suppressor and imbedded itself in the wood seat of the chair a mere two inches in front of the Russian’s crotch.
The Russian’s eyes opened wide with fear and his mouth hung slack with shock.
Rapp muted the phone, walked over, stuck the smoking barrel into the Russian’s groin, and growled, “Shut the fuck up!”
The Russian closed his eyes, whimpered for a second, and then slammed his mouth shut.
Rapp took the phone off mute and said, “Hurry up. I need some help up here.” With that he jabbed the red end button on the phone and considered his next move. He walked over to the door and leaned out into the hallway to check on the old man. All he could see was a dark mass on the floor at the far end. Rapp paused for a second while he did the time conversion. Ten o’clock in Cyprus meant it was four in the afternoon in DC. Kennedy could be anywhere. Rapp decided to call her secure mobile. He punched in the country code, area code, and then the number. It started ringing almost immediately.
The Science and Technology people at Langley provided the top echelon of employees with the most secure phones available, and then installed special encryption software. They issued new phones at least once a year if not every six months. Rapp’s phones never left the box. He didn’t trust them, and it wasn’t because he feared the Rus
sians or the Chinese. It was his own agency and the National Security Agency that he feared most. The full capabilities of the NSA and what they could do with their satellites, listening stations, and eight Cray supercomputers that they kept deep underground in a vast cooled chamber, was known to only a select few. What Rapp did know was that they collected an unbelievable number of foreign calls made into the U.S. every day. Those calls emanating from the Middle East received special attention. The NSA acted like a big fishing trawler. They threw out their nets, reeled them in, and then decided what fish to keep. Except with them it was phone calls, e-mails, and other electronic transmissions. These were prioritized by criteria. Like fishermen who throw the worthless fish back into the sea, the NSA was getting more efficient at maximizing its resources.
At the heart of their mission was code breaking. It always had been and always would be. These billions of intercepts were worthless if they couldn’t decipher them. Rapp knew there were elite teams of brainiacs within the NSA whose sole job was to defeat encryption software. As good as the folks at Langley’s S&T were, the truth was they were no match for the talent that the NSA employed. From a patriot’s perspective, one would think none of this should matter. After all they were all on the same team—the CIA, the NSA, the Pentagon, the Department of Justice, the FBI—all Americans working to defeat global terrorism.
The reality was far more complicated. Just because one administration advocated a certain policy, it didn’t mean the next one would, or that some opportunistic politician on the Hill wouldn’t seize the chance to grab the limelight by calling for an investigation into any one of a dozen things Rapp had done in the last year. What a veteran of the Clandestine Service deemed appropriate action was often very different from what a lawyer at the DOJ might think. And then there were budgets and interagency turf wars. In many ways the domestic side of the business was more dangerous than the operating abroad. At least when he was in the field Rapp knew who his enemies were. At home, politics and personalities were thrown into the mix and any sense of a unified mission was lost.