Hurley lit a cigarette and exhaled. He tilted his face skyward and took in the warmth of the sun. “Do you know what’s strange?”
“There’s a lot of strange shit, Stan. You’re going to have to be more specific.”
Hurley opened one eye and squinted at Rapp. “I feel good.”
“That’s nice.”
“I mean I’m at peace with the whole thing.”
They didn’t talk for over a minute and then Hurley asked, “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Yeah,” Rapp replied. “But they’ll have cameras at the gate.”
Hurley shrugged. “Who gives a shit . . . I’ll be dead in six months.”
“Why do you keep talking like that?”
“Because it’s true,” Hurley said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Rapp thought about it for a moment and then said, “It might be, but—”
“Don’t waste your breath,” Hurley said, cutting him off. “You and I don’t bullshit each other . . . let’s not start now.”
Hurley was right. They’d always been honest with each other, at least after the first year or two. Now wasn’t the time to start denying the truth. Besides, it was his death. He could choose to deal with it in whatever way worked for him.
“All right, let’s go.” Rapp pushed off the car. “You have your Interpol creds?”
“Never leave home without them.”
“Good. I’ll text Scott and let him know.”
They climbed into the car and Rapp fired up the engine. He slipped the car into gear and pulled out on the smooth country road.
“Where are we going?” Hayek asked from the backseat.
“Stan wants to knock on Obrecht’s door.”
“You’re joking, right?”
Hurley shook his head. “I don’t joke about stuff like this, princess.”
“But . . . I thought we were going to wait for him to drive back to Zurich tomorrow.”
“We could,” Rapp said.
“But it might get messy,” Hurley added. “I’m going to knock on the front door instead. You might be surprised how often it works.”
“And if it doesn’t,” Rapp said, “it still might.”
“How?” Hayek didn’t understand anything they were saying.
“Spook him,” Hurley said. “Right now he’s comfortable, thinking everything is fine. We rattle his cage and he might turn that phone on that you’re trying to get a line on. He might fly the coop; he might do anything that would be better for us than spending the night in some boring town and then finding out tomorrow that he doesn’t travel by motorcade back to the city but takes a helicopter instead.”
Hayek didn’t have a lot of time to consider the new plan, as only a few minutes later they pulled off the road across the street from the main gate to Obrecht’s estate. Hurley handed Rapp a set of credentials and checked to make sure his fake Interpol identification was in order.
Rapp looked out the windshield at the four bodyguards. “What do you think . . . rent-a-cops or the real deal?”
Hurley watched the men for a moment and said, “They look like the real deal to me.”
“Me too.”
“No sense in trying to bully my way, then. I’ll make some easy conversation and then leave them a calling card.” And with that, Hurley was out the door. “Wish me luck.”
Rapp watched him cross the street. No one knew Hurley’s exact age, but Rapp guessed he was in his early to mid seventies, although he knew he could easily be off. The man moved like someone twenty years younger but his face showed the wear of someone who had been through a lot of rough stuff.
“Dammit,” Dumond barked from the backseat.
Rapp looked in the rearview mirror to see what was wrong. Dumond had attended MIT with Rapp’s little brother Steven. The computer genius had run afoul of the Feds for hacking into some of New York’s biggest banks. Rapp had Kennedy intervene on Dumond’s behalf. Rather than go to jail, the whiz kid decided to come to work for Langley. Rapp had rarely if ever seen him so frustrated. “What’s wrong, Marcus?”
“This is bullshit, Mitch.”
“You still can’t get in?”
“I can’t even get close.”
“Why?”
“These guys are using heavy-duty shit. Like the stuff the Chinese use, and our buddies out at Fort Meade—I’m talking cutting-edge stuff.”
Rapp didn’t know a lot about what Dumond did, but he tried to help. “Would it be better if you were back at Langley on a bigger computer . . . faster hookup speed?”
Dumond looked at Rapp’s reflection in the mirror with a “don’t even try to act like you know what you’re talking about” look.
Rapp threw up his hands. “Just trying to help.”
Dumond went back to hammering away on his keyboard. “The point I’m trying to make is that this isn’t normal. The only people that pay for protection like this are people who are really paranoid, and I’m not talking paranoid for the sake of being paranoid. I’m talking paranoid because they need to hide some serious shit.”
Rapp watched Hurley talk to the bodyguards, but was still thinking about Dumond’s frustration. Herr Obrecht was turning out to be a far more interesting person than he had first thought. Rapp watched Hurley hand one of the men a card and jog back to the car.
“How’d it go?”
“Nice chap.” Hurley pushed back in his seat and straightened his jacket.
“British?”
“No . . . he’s one of ours . . . Green Beret. The other two are British, and I think the third one is Polish Special Forces.”
“Who do they work for?”
“Obrecht.”
“Directly . . . not Triple Canopy or someone?”
“Nope . . . Obrecht brought them on board a month ago.”
Rapp thought about the timing. “Anything else?”
“Yeah . . . I wrote down my number on a card and told him to give it to his boss.” Hurley pointed across the street. “Look, he’s calling him right now.” The guard had a handset in one hand and Hurley’s business card in the other. “I told him to tell his boss that I needed to talk to him about Louie Gould.”
Rapp was surprised. “I like that. If Gould was telling us the truth, that should freak him out.”
“You think he’ll call?”
“No.” Rapp shook his head. “A guy like this will have his lawyers call Interpol and ask about you, and if you check out then he might call, but it’s a Saturday, so the earliest we’d hear from him would be Monday.”
“Yeah . . . I bet you’re right.”
They watched the bodyguards for another minute and then Rapp said, “I’ve been thinking. Marcus is having a hell of a time trying to get into the bank’s server. He said they are using high-end stuff.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. These banks are security conscious now.”
“This is different,” Dumond declared from the backseat. “Not your normal stuff.”
“My point is this,” Rapp continued. “Obrecht seems awfully security conscious. Does he seem like the kind of guy who would sit down with someone from the FBI and willingly turn over private information pertaining to his clients’ financial transactions?”
Hurley frowned. “No, he doesn’t.”
“This doesn’t smell right. I think someone is jerking our chain.” Rapp drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and was about to suggest they head back to hook up with Coleman when he noticed a dark gray Peugeot round the corner in front of them. As the vehicle neared the gate it slowed to a crawl. Nothing too unusual when you thought of the big ornate gate and the armed men standing in front of it. Rapp’s window was down and he leaned over the steering wheel to get a good look at the driver and passengers. There were four of them, all with jet-black hair and dark skin. The driver had a thick mustache, but it was the man in the rear passenger seat who caught Rapp’s eye. When the cars were almost level with each other, Rapp and the man in the backse
at locked on to each other, and the expression on the man’s face was one of both recognition and fear.
The other car was gone in an instant, and before Rapp could articulate what was on his mind, Hurley said, “What in the fuck are four rag heads doing sightseeing in the middle of Switzerland on a Saturday afternoon?”
Rapp wasn’t sure the men were Afghanis, but he was sure the man in the backseat recognized him. Rapp pulled the gearshift into drive and checked his mirror. “Did you see the guy in the backseat?”
“Yeah . . . He looked like he saw a ghost.” Hurley snapped his head around. “And they’re not waiting around to talk. You’d better whip a U-turn, and step on it.”
CHAPTER 54
RAPP pushed the car past 70 mph, popped in his earpiece, and called Coleman’s cell. As it started to ring he rounded a corner and caught his first glimpse of the gray sedan. The sedan disappeared around the next corner faster than Rapp would have thought possible. They had to be going close to 100 mph.
“They’re in a hurry,” Hurley announced.
“You two have your seat belts on?” Rapp asked Hayek and Dumond. They both did. Rapp glanced over at Hurley and saw that he was not wearing his belt.
“Big deal,” Hurley said in his angry voice.
“Yeah . . . I know, you’re going to be dead in six months, but that’s six months from now, so put on your damn seat belt.”
“What’s up?” Coleman’s voice asked over Rapp’s earpiece.
“We are in pursuit of a gray four-door Peugeot sedan. Headed your way. There’s four guys inside . . . all late thirties or early forties. Looks like they’re Afghanis or Pakistanis.”
“They’re Pakistanis,” Hurley stated more forcefully. “I know my Pakis.”
Rapp ignored him and focused on Coleman. “Are you at the inn?”
“Standing on the sidewalk in front.”
“Get back to the car and get out to the other side of town where we were stopped earlier. The ditch on the south side has some good concealment. Put Wicker in there and have him shoot out the tires on the Peugeot when it clears the town.” Rapp could hear Coleman shouting orders to his men.
“Scott,” Rapp said, “they’re coming fast. You guys need to really haul ass.”
“We’re on it. Already in the car and moving. Do you want me to stay on the line?”
“No, this road only goes to one place. Get in position and call me, and if you guys get in a shootout, don’t kill all of them. We need to talk to a few of these guys.”
“Copy. I’ll ring you back.”
Hurley pointed at the road. “You need to speed up.”
“Scott’s got things handled.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“God, you’re a pain in the ass sometimes.” Rapp braked and turned the wheel, the tires skidding on the pavement. “You want me to end up in the ditch?”
“I just think you could go a little faster, that’s all.”
They were on a straightaway now and Rapp pushed the BMW north of 100 mph, only to have a car pull out of a driveway. Rapp swerved into the oncoming lane and slowed. Another tight turn was up ahead and there was no sign of the Peugeot. With each turn he expected to see the car smoking and wrapped around a tree. He didn’t need to catch them, only stay close enough to drive them to Coleman.
• • •
Three hundred yards on the other side of town, right where the road began to curve north, Coleman pulled over and popped the trunk. Wicker jumped out and grabbed his shooting bag. As soon as the trunk was closed, the BMW took off and Wicker ran across the road, into the ditch, and up the other side. The mistake most people made with vehicle interdiction was that they set up too close to the road. Once you took the shot you then ended up with a five-ton vehicle careening toward you out of control. Wicker went to the edge of the trees, turned, checked out his spot, and dropped his bag.
The former SEAL sniper didn’t bother with his camouflage netting, as the trees offered enough concealment. He set up his position against the base of a big pine tree, then marked two signs on the road and their approximate distance. As Wicker eased his eye into position behind the scope, he focused on his breathing.
Less than ten seconds later he heard the roar of an engine and popped his head up to see the gray sedan flying through the middle of town at an incredibly reckless speed. Wicker dropped his eye behind the scope and acquired the target. The guy was going too fast to allow Wicker to get off an accurate shot, but Wicker knew he would have to slow down or he’d never make the next turn. Almost on cue, the vehicle braked hard. Wicker sighted in on the front driver’s side tire and squeezed off a suppressed round.
A split second later he heard a pop and then the sound of rubber shredding. The front left corner of the Peugeot dropped down and the back end began to swing around clockwise. Wicker grabbed his rifle and rolled behind the big pine. It was going to be close.
• • •
Kassar had been filled with a sense of dread for several days. The only reason he’d accepted the job to go to Zurich was that it would provide him with the opportunity to run if he finally made the decision. He no longer trusted Durrani. He’d seen him kill one too many people to tie up his so-called loose ends. Sooner or later Kassar was going to be one of those loose ends, and Durrani would replace him with one of his fanatical goons, like the three men he was working with today.
Kassar despised them. Durrani had found them in the tribal areas and trained them to carry out his radical plots. They were thoughtless militants who wavered between amazing acts of bravery and stupidity. There was not an ounce of finesse among the three of them. After the first pass of Obrecht’s estate, the men unanimously wanted to wait until nightfall and storm the property. Kassar tried to explain to them that the odds of a successful outcome were close to zero, but they would not listen to him.
It was on the second pass that they found a big surprise. Kassar had learned that they liked to question his authority unless he invoked General Durrani, so he had told them upon leaving the embassy that Durrani had been very specific. If they saw Mitch Rapp they were supposed to abort the mission and get back to the Pakistani Embassy as soon as possible. When they made their second pass and he saw the BMW parked across the street, Kassar was curious. Then he saw Rapp behind the steering wheel. For once the men listened to him when he told them whom he had seen and that they needed to go as fast as possible.
For the first half mile it worked, and then Mansur, the self-appointed leader of the three, started talking about setting up an ambush. When Kassar told him no, Mansur wanted to argue and began asking for input from the other two imbeciles. That was when Kassar lost it and pulled out his phone. “I’m calling the general, you idiot. He gave us specific orders and now you want to argue with him.” Kassar made a great show of hitting Send and then holding the phone to his ear.
Mansur tried to apologize, but Kassar was not interested. When Durrani finally got on the phone, Kassar filled him in on what was going on and then told him that the men he had sent were incompetent fools who should be reassigned to one of the suicide battalions that the Taliban were so proud of. When Durrani started asking too many questions, Kassar cut him off and told him he would call him back. He ended the call just as they raced into the small town, going so fast that they were out of it by the time Kassar could tell the driver to slow down.
He breathed a huge sigh of relief that they were back among the fields and trees. Kassar had just started to tell the driver to slow down when it happened. The car lurched, slowed suddenly, and then began to spin out of control. None of them were wearing their seat belts, and when the car came out of its first full spin it flipped, and Kassar found himself floating between the seat and the ceiling. Then the vehicle hit something incredibly hard and helicoptered upside down into the forest until it came violently to a stop between two trees.
Disoriented but conscious, Kassar began to feel his way out of the upside-down car. There was broken glass everyw
here and he could already smell the petrol leaking and the burnt rubber of the tires. There were other movements inside the car. Unfortunately, the fool Mansur was still alive. The driver was motionless. The thought of Rapp in close pursuit drove Kassar to ignore the pain and move faster. He squirmed out of the vehicle, onto his back, and sat up. He immediately noticed his balance was off, but nothing appeared to be broken. Mansur and one of the other men got out of the car and wanted to know what to do. Kassar stood and looked down the road. To his left he noticed another car and some men with rifles. To his right he thought he glimpsed Rapp’s BMW moving through the small town.
Mansur clutched his arm. “We should make a stand here.”
Kassar shook his head and said, “I know what we need to do.” He pointed into the woods, and when Mansur and the other man turned to see what he was pointing at, Kassar shot them both in the back of the head. He then dropped his gun, put his hands above his head, and walked back to the road.
CHAPTER 55
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, GERMANY
THE Gulfstream G550 touched down after dark. The president had ordered Kennedy to meet with her counterpart in Pakistan to see if she could find a solution to the brewing controversy at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, where four Pakistani nationals were seeking political asylum after having been exposed by Rickman. The crowds were growing each day, the worst and most violent on Friday when a group of radical imams had led a march on the embassy that had resulted in three deaths and Pakistani security forces dispersing the crowd with tear gas and rubber bullets. The imams had promised to return and storm the embassy. Kennedy was to try to find a backdoor solution. If she failed, the secretary of state would be making the next trip.
The G550 was capable of flying nonstop from D.C. to Islamabad, but Kennedy had the plane diverted to Ramstein after Rapp told her what he’d discovered. Kennedy’s plane came to a stop next to the other CIA G550, and as soon as the stairs were lowered, Rapp bounded up the steps with Hurley following. Rapp and Hurley continued past the director’s security detail and her staff to the back of the plane, where they sat down with Kennedy. With the help of Hayek, Rapp had prepared a briefing folder for Kennedy.