The SWAT leader thought about that for a few seconds before pulling a ram out of the back. It took a few minutes, but they finally defeated the door and disappeared inside. The lights attached to their weapons flashed haphazardly around the entryway before going dark again as they penetrated deeper. Wilson lit a cigarette. He wouldn’t put it past Rapp to have the place booby-trapped. Not his problem, though. That’s what the SWAT guys got paid for.
What would he find inside this vault of a house? Cash skimmed from government accounts? Souvenirs from illegal assassinations? Materials Rapp used to blackmail government officials into supporting him? If he found the latter, Wilson wondered what he should do with it. Certainly not hand it over. No, he’d hold on to it until he’d built a case so airtight that half of Washington would have to get behind him while the other half threw themselves out of windows. And he’d be there at the center of it all, the media’s new darling.
Finally a voice came over the walkie-talkie on the seat next to him.
“We’re clear.”
Wilson jumped down from the vehicle and entered, walking over the smashed door and flipping a light switch. A tasteful glow grew around him, illuminating expensive woodwork, Asian-inspired furniture, and a bold painting of a flower that looked like it cost more than he made in a year.
“Tear the place apart,” he said, throwing the painting to the floor in search of a hidden safe. Or at least that was what he’d tell anyone who asked. He began yanking drawers out of the sideboard as the sound of similar activity began filtering down the hallway.
When he was finished in the entry, he skirted a glass wall that looked into an interior courtyard and entered what looked to be a child’s room. One of his men was sifting gingerly through the contents of a shelf and Wilson pushed him aside, dumping everything onto the floor. “Move your ass! I don’t have all week.”
The man stared nervously at the mess before following orders and picking up the pace. The reverence they afforded a psychotic CIA thug was both insulting and an impediment to getting anything accomplished. Wilson was looking forward to hearing their mumbled apologies when he shined a bright light into who and what Mitch Rapp really was.
He heard running feet in the hallway and went out to see what was happening. A man with an iPad rushed up and held it out. “I found this in the master bedroom, sir. It’s password protected, but I think you’ll be interested in the wallpaper image.”
Wilson woke it and stared down at three smiling people looking back at him. One was a little girl, laughing as she tapped a croquet ball across the yard of a Cape Dutch house. Standing next to her was a woman in her midthirties, dark hair and eyes, stunningly beautiful. Most interesting, though, was the man sticking his foot out to block the ball from finding its target. Mitch Rapp. A current photo, in living color.
Wilson grinned and looked up, scanning the junction between the wall and ceiling for a security camera. When he found one, he approached it and raised the tablet toward the lens.
CHAPTER 42
Outside of Juba
South Sudan
THE power was out again, but the breeze coming through the open windows kept the heat down. The fifty-year-old mansion had been converted into a hotel years ago, but after Sudan’s split, it had been largely shut down. The owner had been endlessly grateful when they rented the entire property, and he’d been working ever since to demonstrate that gratitude. Not only was the place spotless, but a sideboard in the living room was arranged with hard-to-get premium liquor.
Azarov was reading the label on a bottle of bourbon while Rapp scanned the landscape beyond the windows. According to Black, this area was under the iron-fisted control of a rebel group that Abdo counted among his most dedicated enemies. The young sniper seemed confident that they were momentarily safe from the locals, and Rapp had no reason to question that conclusion. The kid seemed to understand the intricacies of the fighting around Juba.
“I haven’t been able to find much information that I have confidence in,” Claudia said, grazing on a platter of vegetables provided by their host. “I’m certain that Nassar is in the U.S. and ninety percent sure that he had a meeting at the White House.”
“What about now?” Rapp asked.
“The best I could determine is that he went to North Dakota.”
“That seems kind of unlikely,” Black said. He was on his fourth beer and looked like he was starting to feel them.
“I agree. I’m working to corroborate, but it’s difficult.”
“If he’s in the States, he’s vulnerable,” Black said. “It would be a hell of a lot easier to operate there than in Saudi Arabia.”
“I wonder,” Azarov said. “If I were him, I’d have requested an American security team. Mitch would hesitate to attack out of fear of injuring one of them.”
“A frontal assault isn’t feasible anyway,” Claudia said. “Even if it succeeded, it would play into the narrative that Mitch has gone insane and is running around the globe, killing people. He’d be hunted for the rest of his life, and anything he had to say about the Saudis would be completely discredited.”
“It’s like being teamed up with a bunch of old ladies,” Black said. “I’ll do it. I’ll go to North Dakota or Iowa or wherever and pop that asshole right in the head. No muss, no fuss, no collateral damage. And Mitch can be three thousand miles away with an airtight alibi.”
“They’d still assume he was behind it, based on what’s happened so far,” Donatella said.
Black grabbed another beer. “But Claudia said she could get Mitch off the hook for killing Nassar’s two buddies—”
“Three,” Rapp said, causing the others to turn toward him. “Qadir Sultan was found dead last night along with two security men from the Saudi intelligence ministry.”
“Let me guess,” Donatella said. “One shot to the head from a nine-millimeter bullet.”
“That matches the early reports.”
“He’s destroying his own network in an effort to keep it from leading back to him,” Azarov pointed out. “Is it possible that this is good for us?”
“Sultan was the last of the men that we’ve identified as being close to him,” Claudia said. “It’s likely that his network extends further, but Mitch and I don’t think anyone left would have direct knowledge of Nassar’s involvement. He would have interacted with them through intermediaries.”
“Then punching a few holes in Nassar is the way to go,” Black said. “He’s taken out his lieutenants for us. With him dead the whole thing collapses. Job done, Mitch hangs out a shingle and makes an obscene amount of money taking contracts. How is this not a good plan?”
“Because the rest of us are experienced enough to know we don’t want to spend the rest of our lives being hunted by the world’s governments,” Donatella said. “It’s not as romantic as it sounds, Kent.”
“Then we need to demonstrate Nassar’s involvement,” Azarov said. “Prove that he killed those people and that he’s financing ISIS.”
“Agreed, but it’s easier said than done,” Claudia replied. “The man doesn’t leave behind a lot of loose ends.”
Rapp’s phone chimed as a heated discussion of their situation broke out among the others. He opened a hidden app and watched a series of jerky images being broadcast via a satellite connection.
The gate he’d spent so much money on turned out to be worth every penny, surviving the first attempt at a breach before succumbing to a SWAT vehicle traveling at reckless speeds. His front door had held longer than expected, too, noticeably fatiguing the men who were now fanning out in his entryway. A man wearing a suit instead of combat gear appeared after the area had been secured and Rapp squinted down at the image.
Claudia would be pleased to know that she’d been right about North Dakota. It was where the FBI had sent Joel Wilson.
Wilson began tearing up the room, ostensi
bly in a search but really just to cause as much destruction as possible. Rapp had told Irene Kennedy that they should bury that piece of shit in the woods somewhere, but she’d thought moving against him would cause more problems than it solved. He wondered if she still felt that way.
“Mitch?” Claudia said. “Mitch? What are you doing? Are you listening to us?”
He didn’t respond, so she broke up the meeting, finally coming alongside him while the others wandered off.
“Are you all right?” She glanced at the phone and put a hand on his shoulder. “You must have expected this.”
“Yeah.”
He concentrated on Wilson as the man held a tablet up to one of the interior security cameras. He recognized the wallpaper picture as one taken of him playing with Anna and Claudia in front of her house in South Africa. Now the man had a current picture of all of them as well as a shot of Claudia’s home.
“Who is he, Mitch?”
“An old enemy that I didn’t deal with when I had a chance.”
“CIA?”
“FBI.”
“So now Nassar’s solicited the help of the American government. I hate to bring this up again, but is it time for you to contact Irene?”
He didn’t respond, instead freezing the image and continuing to stare down at it.
“Mitch?”
“How hard will it be for them to get into your tablet?”
“Hard. It would take even Marcus at least a week. There’s nothing on it, though. I use it mostly for reading magazines.”
“Can you access it remotely?”
“No. It’s not set up that way. Why?”
“What about the computer at your house in Cape Town? Could you access that remotely?”
“Sure. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that, with that picture, it’s not going to take them long to show up on your doorstep.”
She shrugged. “We’re not there, and accessing the information on my computer would be extraordinarily difficult, Mitch. I have confidential files on it from my time working with Louis. It would take years, even with the help of the NSA.”
“But you could get in remotely and make it easy, right? Wipe the sensitive information and change the password to Anna’s birthday or something.”
“Sure. But why?”
He ignored the question. “Would it be possible to create some fictitious emails between you and me and backdate them?”
“Not too difficult, but they wouldn’t be entirely convincing, particularly combined with the simplistic password. If someone looked closely, I’m not sure the scenario you’re talking about would hold up.”
Rapp nodded slowly, only partially hearing her. Nassar had to be dealt with whether it blew back against him or not—that was a decision Rapp had already made. But if he could lead Nassar into a trap and get someone else to do the wet work, his life would be a lot simpler. And probably a lot longer.
He tossed his phone onto the table in front of him. “It doesn’t need to hold up. I know Joel Wilson, and I can guarantee you that he only sees what he wants to see.”
CHAPTER 43
Langley
Virginia
U.S.A.
IRENE Kennedy closed the thick file on Aali Nassar’s life and considered what she’d read. His early schooling had come from the Saudi madrassa system, but he’d moved on to an English university after that—an educational background that could create both radical Islamists and secular moderates. He was extraordinarily competent and ambitious, traits that defined both great men and evil ones. Which was he?
In the world of intelligence, nothing was black-and-white. This situation, though, was more murky than most. Unfortunately, if she pieced it together in the most logical way, the picture that emerged was as ugly as any she’d ever seen.
She was virtually certain that President Alexander had set Mitch on his current course without considering the consequences. And now that those consequences were making themselves known, he was scrambling for cover. It was a game that had been played by powerful men for thousands of years.
The Iraqis who had attacked the nightclub in Monaco were associated with ISIS, and their pursuit of Prince bin Musaid after he’d escaped suggested that this wasn’t the random terrorist attack that the public believed it to be.
After acknowledging those two things, though, she was forced to step onto far less stable ground. It seemed likely that Rapp had sent Donatella into that club in an effort to lure bin Musaid to a location where he could be interrogated. The terrorist attack was a violent and messy interruption of an operation that should have been clean and quiet.
Assuming that Nassar was indeed behind bin Musaid’s terrorist activities, what would he think of Mitch Rapp’s rescue of the prince? The answer was obvious. He would have no choice but to assume that bin Musaid had given up everything about Nassar’s network, forcing the intelligence chief to get rid of anyone who knew of his involvement. The three men who had been killed so far all had unusually strong connections to Nassar.
It was there that the web became even more tangled. She certainly wouldn’t put the torture and deaths of those men beyond Rapp. But would he have had the resources to move so quickly? Doubtful. Would he have killed the security guard at the Brussels hotel? Absolutely not. It seemed much more likely that it was all Nassar’s doing. His survival now depended on cutting ties to ISIS and getting rid of Rapp.
The question now was what action should she take. What action could she take? President Alexander had washed his hands of Rapp, but she wasn’t Joshua Alexander. She very much appreciated Rapp respecting her wishes and keeping her out of this. But how long could she remain in the background? They’d been through too much together for her to abandon him.
There was a quiet knock on the door, followed by one of her assistants entering. “Dr. Kennedy? There’s a Special Agent Joel Wilson here to see you. He doesn’t have an appointment.”
She’d expected a call, but a surprise visit? Wilson was enjoying himself even more than she’d anticipated. “Thank you. Send him in.”
By the time she could stand, he was already striding across the carpet.
“Hello, Joel.” She began to extend a hand but he just dropped uninvited into one of the chairs in front of her desk.
“I assume you’ve heard?”
“That you managed to get a search warrant for Mitch’s house? Yes.”
A smug smile played at his lips. “Word in this town travels fast.”
Which was exactly what he wanted, she knew. Wilson desperately needed for everyone to know that he had been vindicated. That he now wielded the power of the White House in his crusade to vanquish the corrupt forces lined up against him.
She also knew that he blamed her as much as Rapp for what had happened to him. What he would never accept was that he had done this to himself and that the penalties for his actions could have been much worse. If it hadn’t been for her and Director Miller, Joel Wilson might have ended up in jail. Or dead.
“We’ve been able to determine with nearly one hundred percent certainty that Rapp was the man in Monaco.”
She sat, resigning herself to the fact that this meeting wasn’t going to be as brief as she’d hoped. “He’s retired, Joel. He’s allowed to go to nightclubs.”
“I figured you’d say that. We’ve also been able to determine that he was the man who attacked the two security guards at that Brussels hotel. Tell me, Irene. Is he allowed to do that?”
“What about the one who was killed?” she said, genuinely curious.
“He covered his tracks better on that. But we’re working on it.”
She nodded. “And what does all this lead you to believe?”
“That he’s finally completely lost his fucking mind. I don’t know what did it—the stress, the concussions, watching his wif
e get blown apart . . . Doesn’t matter, though, because he’s running around the world, murdering innocent people. And I think we can both agree he isn’t going to stop unless someone makes him. He likes the taste of blood, Irene. He’s addicted to it.”
There was so much that could be said. About bin Musaid’s involvement with ISIS. About Nassar’s connections to the dead men. But mostly about Mitch Rapp himself. In fact, he despised the taste of blood. His entire life had been nothing but one sacrifice after another. None of it would make any difference, though. Wilson saw only himself.
“You’re a talented investigator, Joel. You always have been. But your judgment’s being clouded by your personal feelings. I’d urge you to clear your mind and apply it to the problem. If you do, you’ll see that none of what’s happened makes sense.”
He actually laughed at that. “My personal feelings? You’re so blinded by him, you can’t see the bodies piling up around you. Hell, I just got testimony that last year he shot an unarmed Iraqi girl named Laleh Qarni.”
Kennedy stiffened. “Let me offer you a piece of advice, Joel. If you should ever come face-to-face with Mitch, don’t mention that name. I’ve known him for most of my life, and even I wouldn’t dare say it out loud in his presence. Do you understand?”
Whether it was what she’d said or how she’d said it, the FBI man’s arrogance faltered. As a cover, he pulled out a photo and slapped it on her desk. It depicted Mitch, Claudia, and Anna playing croquet in South Africa.
“Forget Laleh.” He tapped the photo. “Who’s this woman?”
He didn’t have clearance to know her real identity, so Kennedy used the one the CIA had created for her. “Claudia Dufort.”
“What’s her relationship to Rapp?”
“Personal.”
“And where can I find her?”
“Presumably with Mitch.”
“And the girl?”
“Her name is Anna.”
“Did he take her on his killing spree, too?”