When the vehicle got close, he turned toward it, raising a hand in greeting. The armed men in the back looked on suspiciously but then quickly recognized him as the American who had gained General Mustafa’s favor. The man who had defied not only the CIA but the infamous Mitch Rapp.
They shouted unintelligibly as they passed, saluting him with their assault rifles. Rapp continued along the street, navigating by mental map as his eyes readjusted to the darkness.
He ran a hand along the front of a building to his right, using his fingers to locate the alley he had seen moments before. It was the one Laleh had told him about, but it was less than five feet wide, creating an even deeper darkness. It took almost a minute, but Rapp found the door handle he’d been assured was there and used it to enter a building that smelled of charred wood. He ascended the stairs, aiming for a dim sliver of light bleeding around a door at the top.
Knocking turned out to be unnecessary. The door was pulled open and he was yanked inside. The man closing it behind him was immediately recognizable as Laleh’s brother Mohammed. The other four men in the room were armed and standing against the far wall. Weapons ranged from AKs to a Smith & Wesson SD40 pistol, and all were aimed at him.
“These are your men?” Rapp asked in Arabic.
“Yes,” Mohammed said, moving to take a position with them.
Rapp let out a long breath and squinted his swollen eyes against the glare of a single overhead bulb. Laleh’s other brother was there, still looking a bit shaken by the blow Rapp had delivered. The two men to his right were both thin and wearing glasses that looked fairly thick. Rapp had met hundreds like them in his time operating in the Middle East—secular intellectuals prone to endless political philosophizing but good for little else. The last man was a beast, nearly Maslick’s size, with a thick beard and eyes full of hate.
“All of them?” Rapp said.
Mohammed nodded.
So, two guys who looked like they used inhalers, one he’d obviously hit a little too hard, and one who was staring at him like he wanted to carve his heart out with a sharp rock. Outstanding.
“How did you learn to speak Arabic so well?” the big one said.
“My mother emigrated from Iraq in the fifties. She taught me.”
It was a reasonable cover story that explained both his dark complexion and his accent.
“You’re a liar. You’re one of the CIA men who has been killing our people for decades.”
Rapp shrugged and waved a hand in the general direction of the blacked-out windows. “What has the CIA ever done to you that can compare with this?”
The other men had lowered their weapons, but the big one talking kept his aimed at Rapp’s chest.
“Why should we help him?”
“We’ve already discussed this,” Mohammed said. “The Americans are the only people with the power to defeat ISIS and free our country. But they hesitate. Why, Gaffar? Because they see us squabbling endlessly among ourselves. They see no hope.”
Mohammed grabbed a rolled up poster-size piece of paper and spread it out on the floor. Rapp knelt next to him and immediately recognized it as a map of Al-Shirqat.
“We’re here,” Mohammed said, pointing to the northern part of the city while the others gathered around. He ran his finger toward the western edge. “The building housing the training facility you’re looking for is here.”
“Outside of town.”
“Barely. Perhaps half a kilometer. The Americans built it as a school but the instructors have all been executed. Now the building is used to hold girls being sold and used by ISIS. Three months ago, a group of new men came to live and train there. Eric Jesem was one of them.”
“How many men in total?”
Mohammed glanced at one of his bespectacled comrades, who answered in a voice quiet enough that it was difficult to hear.
“At first, maybe fifty. Most, including Jesem, left about a month ago. Some returned but most haven’t. Now our best estimate is twenty-three men.”
That made sense. Mustafa had sent teams, including the one Jesem had served in, to get the fissile material in Pakistan. A number of them had been killed; others had likely been posted to other positions within ISIS. The men who remained were the ones who had been chosen to carry out the next phase of the operation.
“Describe the building,” Rapp said.
“It’s primarily built of concrete, with two stories,” Mohammed said. “A fence surrounds it, but the gate was knocked down when ISIS took over and has never been repaired. One guard at the entrance. The children are kept on the upper floor at night. It’s accessed by a staircase at the back of the building. The men sleep in various locations throughout the ground floor.”
“Are all of your people familiar with the layout?”
He nodded.
“Electricity?”
“They have generators. Some usage at night, but limited.”
It was more or less what Rapp expected. They’d put the training facility in a building full of kids to give it cover from U.S. bombing raids, but running full lights at night would be pushing it.
“Weapons?”
“All are armed with AK-47s and a single sidearm. The models of those vary.”
“What about you?”
“We have what you see here. A few spare magazines each.”
“Any access to more men or arms?”
“No.”
“Okay,” Rapp said, standing. “Then let’s go.”
They all just stared at him. Mohammed’s brother was the first to speak. “What do you mean? Go where?”
“To attack that facility.”
“We can’t just attack them. We would need to discuss it. To plan. We would—”
“What is there to talk about? Mohammed said you’re all familiar with the facility’s layout. We know the strength of the opposition force and we know where the students are.”
“No. This is—”
“Silence!” Gaffar said, rising to what Rapp estimated to be a full six foot four. “We will not attack that facility.”
“Why?” Rapp said. “Are you afraid?”
In response, he raised the barrel of his SD40, leveling it a few inches from Rapp’s ruined nose. “Because I won’t follow you. Look at your face. At what you let someone do to you. No. You speak as though you’re a great warrior but you smell like a bureaucrat. Like a man who will have piss running down his leg at the first sight of blood.”
Rapp considered trying to talk the man down, but he was clearly not the type to be swayed by conversation. And, frankly, that made him uniquely useful in this group.
Instead, Rapp dodged left, grabbing Gaffar’s wrist and yanking his arm straight. A moderate blow to the Iraqi’s exposed elbow was enough to get him to drop the gun but not enough to do any damage. Rapp had already made that mistake with Mohammed’s brother.
The pistol fell and Rapp caught it as the other men in the room scrambled for their rifles. He drove his foot into the side of the big man’s leg to take him down, simultaneously firing four rounds toward the men reaching for their weapons. Each struck less than an inch from their hands.
After the echo of the shots died, everything went completely still. Gaffar was on his knees and the others were frozen near the back wall. Rapp stuffed the pistol in his waistband and pointed toward the door. “Who’s driving?”
CHAPTER 40
NEAR JIWANI
PAKISTAN
THE man piloting the truck was going too fast, but trying to impose reasonable driving habits on the people of this region was an exercise in futility. Grisha Azarov gripped the wooden crate he was perched atop and tightened the scarf protecting his lungs from the dust.
The young men seated around him seemed to be enjoying their journey through Western Pakistan on the open flatbed. Neither the spine-crushing jolts nor the oppressive heat seemed sufficient to dampen their spirits.
All were members of ISIS, selected by Maxim Krupin for their desirable qualit
ies. They were obviously young and strong. Beyond those traits and their deep well of enthusiasm, though, Azarov wasn’t sure what made them so exceptional.
The truck came around a corner at a speed that caused the load to list dangerously. The crates, filled mostly with goods to be traded along the Gulf, had been stacked more than four meters high. Azarov clung to one of the ropes securing the load as the vehicle rocked onto two wheels. He found himself almost hoping for a well-timed wind gust. It would be a fitting end to this twisted enterprise: him lying among the injured ISIS men surrounded by bolts of cloth, canned food, and the fissile material stolen from Pakistan’s arsenal.
They crested a hill and the Gulf of Oman became visible in the distance, a blinding mirror under the powerful desert sun. The men around him began to talk excitedly, but he spoke only rudimentary Arabic and had no idea what they were saying.
It was one of the many reasons he should have been a thousand miles from this place. His experience in the Middle East was almost entirely a function of his life as an energy consultant. He was intimately familiar with the region’s high-end hotel suites, conference centers, and European-style restaurants. Occasionally, he would be taken to a new extraction facility in the back of an air-conditioned SUV—usually one equipped with a bar.
His mind drifted from the task at hand to his future—a subject that he had never given much thought to until a few weeks ago. Would Krupin really release him? It would be the most reasonable course of action, and the Russian president could generally be counted on to take that path when it was in his best interest. There were a number of notable exceptions, though. Some of which Azarov had been personally involved in.
It would be easy to make the mistake of attributing Krupin’s obsession with power entirely to his desire for survival. This was not necessarily the case. There were times when the Russian politician took significant risks to punish some irrelevant apparatchik or low-level criminal who dared to defy him. There was never any profit in it, only an opportunity for Krupin to exercise his rage and sense of superiority.
Would this be one of those instances?
Azarov had served the Russian president for so long that it was hard to remember the modest farmer and soldier he once was. When they’d first met, Krupin had seemed like a god. Bold and cunning, worldly and well educated. Azarov was dazzled—overwhelmed, really—by the man. He’d wanted what Krupin had. To be respected and feared by great men. To wield power and wealth with the same thoughtless ease. To become a man who commanded the attention of the world.
Now, though, he wanted none of those things. And he had learned to see Maxim Krupin for what he was: a desperate and ultimately weak man whose legacy could be only destruction, because it was all he knew.
The truck finally came to a stop where the dirt road disappeared into a sandy beach. A three-masted dhow was anchored just offshore, its angled stern and tapered bow bobbing in the light chop. The men around him immediately got to work, some jumping to the ground and others beginning to free the truck’s cargo. Azarov climbed down one of the straps and stood in the shade of the teetering load, gazing across the water toward Oman.
Was Mitch Rapp on the far shore, staring back from a similar beach? Russian intelligence had managed to pick him up at the hospital where Scott Coleman was being treated, but the fools had then promptly lost him. There were reports that he’d been near Bhakkar, but Krupin’s agents had only been able to confirm the presence of Joe Maslick.
A confrontation with Rapp was inevitable, but Azarov didn’t want it to be here in the blinding sun and oppressive heat. These were Rapp’s conditions. In some ways, his home. Azarov would prefer to lure him to northern Russia—somewhere cold, dark, and closed in, where the advantage would be his.
The captain of the dhow waded ashore and pointed at him, shouting something in Arabic. While Azarov didn’t understand the words, the meaning was clear: Get to work unloading the truck.
The man had no idea who he was talking to, but he was right. There was no point in attracting attention by standing in the shade while the others ferried crates to the boat. Azarov walked to the back and one of his men pointed to a box marked with a subtle red X. He stacked another on top of it and the Russian lifted them, wading into the water before wedging his cargo into a large inner tube.
He started toward the starboard side of the boat, walking as far as he could before being forced to cling to the side of the tube and kick. He was about ten meters out when he saw a shadow moving in the water beneath him. The diver rose up from the darkness and pulled the marked box through the bottom of the tube. The procedure was even smoother than Azarov had anticipated, resulting in nothing more than minor bobbing. If there had been anyone on shore watching, it was unlikely they would have noticed anything unusual. If the Americans were watching from above, they would be utterly blind to what had happened.
Azarov continued forward as the diver descended to a hidden container attached to the hull.
Once fully loaded, the dhow would take him and his men into the Persian Gulf, where they would unload their smuggled cargo on a remote Saudi beach. It was an uncomfortable and slow mode of transportation, but one unlikely to attract attention.
Azarov arrived at the boat and two men climbed down a cargo net to take the remaining crate off his tube. Once they had it, he swam back toward shore to get another load.
In a few days it would all be over. He would return to Costa Rica and in the worldwide chaos that ensued, he would finally be forgotten.
CHAPTER 41
AL-SHIRQAT
IRAQ
RAPP slithered up the dirt slope in almost complete darkness. Gaffar and Mohammed were to his left and the two eggheads were on his right. He’d left Mohammed’s brother with the car. The man still hadn’t completely recovered from the punch to the back of the head, but otherwise he seemed solid.
The moon was full, but the dust in the air had turned it into little more than a smear in the eastern sky. Still, it was enough to see one of the geeks start to rise onto all fours. Rapp shoved his ass down for the fourth time and for the fourth time received a mumbled apology.
Not exactly the team he was used to working with. He’d give a couple fingers in exchange for a few of Coleman’s boys, but that wasn’t going to happen. What was it Rummy liked to say? “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want.” And in this case, the army he had consisted of two computer nerds, a man with no combat experience, and a former Iraqi soldier who might put a bullet in Rapp’s back the second he turned it.
They crested the slope and went still, looking down on the building a hundred yards away. Detail was hard to see, but Rapp could make out that it consisted of two stories, as reported. Most of the construction did indeed look to be concrete and there was a discernible glint from a chain-link fence. It was probably only seven feet high and had no razor wire—probably built more to keep kids corralled during recess than to fend off an armed assault. A little light was filtering around a poorly arranged blackout shade on the first floor, but that was it. No sign of activity from either the children or the men barracked there. It was 2 a.m. and most everyone would be asleep.
A brief flash near the open gate caught his eye, and he searched using his peripheral vision to maximize light sensitivity. A dim outline became visible through the dust and darkness, a lone guard leaning casually against a sandbag barrier. He would have been invisible if it hadn’t been for the reddish glow of his cigarette.
“So you’re saying twenty-three men inside, give or take,” Rapp said. “Do we have any idea how many kids are upstairs?”
“Perhaps forty?” Mohammed responded. “It’s difficult to know. Mustafa’s men constantly bring new ones in and auction off others. Most aren’t even from this area anymore.”
“Ages?”
“As young as six. Maybe a few in their late teens.”
That was going to create a complete clusterfuck. The better part of fifty children panicking and a
ll moving at different speeds, with some of the teens trying to help the younger ones while others just stampeded over them. Not something he wanted to deal with.
“What’s our plan?” Mohammed asked.
Rapp scooted back, bringing them all in close so they could hear.
“Mo and I will go in—”
“No,” Gaffar said immediately. “I will go with you.”
Clearly the big man still didn’t trust him.
“I have to have you here,” Rapp said. “It’s likely we’re going to need cover fire when we come out and you’re our only experienced shooter.”
Gaffar grumbled a bit but seemed to understand that it was the most effective use of their limited manpower.
“What about us?” one of the geeks asked.
“Your job is to protect Gaffar and this position. If anyone comes up behind or to the sides of him, they’re your responsibility. I want to be perfectly clear, though. Under no circumstances are you to fire a gun in my direction.”
Gaffar let out a quiet laugh.
“What about the two of us?” Mohammed said. “What are we going to do?”
“Just follow my lead. Once we get in, we’re going to go straight to the back of the building as quietly as possible. Priority one is keeping those kids contained upstairs. That’s your only responsibility.”
“And you?”
“Once you make sure no kids are going to get in my way, I’m going to start killing people.”
“Alone?” Gaffar said. “With only my pistol?”
“Yes. And if everyone stays calm and does their job, we should be in and out in just a few minutes.”
Rapp slapped Gaffar on the back. “When Mustafa’s men start coming out of the building, let them. Kill shots at this distance are going to be hard and if you start shooting too soon, you’ll just drive them back under cover. Oh, and if the kids manage to get out of the building, remember—they’re the short ones.”
With that, he pulled Mohammed to his feet and they started strolling casually toward the gate.