Vince Flynn: Executive Power

He had dropped anchor the morning before just off the port beam of the Prince's massive yacht, placing one other boat between his and the Prince's. Under orders from London, he'd been loosely shadowing the Prince for over a week. He'd even gotten to know a few of the crew members in the process. The captain of the ship was a retired French naval officer, as was much of his crew. Like most mariners, they were friendly to other sailors. While picking up provisions back in San Remo, Alan found out the ship was headed for Monte Carlo and then on to Cannes, a very common trip for the big yachts. Alan let it be known that he was headed in the same direction, so they'd probably be bumping into each other along the way. Things had progressed now to the point where the crew knew him on sight and waved as they went back and forth to shore in their power launch.

Headquarters was famous for being skimpy with the information they gave to their people in the field. They'd told Alan only to follow, observe, record and report. They didn't tell him why they wanted him to baby-sit Prince Omar, but then again, they didn't really need to.

Alan knew enough about the dysfunctional House of Saud to know what his government was interested in.

The conversation that was taking place on the big ship didn't appear to be what they were after, and the dashing young man who had arrived less than an hour ago didn't fit the profile of an Islamic fundamentalist.

With this in mind Alan checked his dials one more time to make sure everything was being recorded and then he began to read his paper, only half listening to the conversation that was going on in his left ear.

With the sun quickly warming the cool morning air, Alan let out a yawn and crossed his left leg over his right. The voice of a woman drew his attention away from the paper and he looked across the water to see what was going on. From his vantage point all he could see were the tops of several heads, and then a blond beauty came into view near the back of one of the upper sun decks Without warning she dropped her robe and stretched her pale arms above her head, revealing a very nice pair of breasts. Alan lunged for his binoculars, but by the time he got them up she was gone. He laughingly shook his head. He was slowing down in his old age.

He was still smiling as he went back to his paper, and then slowly, his face turned more serious. The conversation between the Prince and his visitor had without warning gone from mundane to quite noteworthy.

Alan checked again to make sure the equipment was recording and then he went back to feigning interest in the paper. Whoever this David was, he would have to get some photos of him when he climbed back on board the launch to return to shore. As the two men continued their discussion, Alan decided that London would be very interested indeed in his next report.

Mitch Rapp drove across the Key Bridge on his way to a meeting at the White House. His mood was tense and his patience short. He was not happy about what he'd learned this morning. The honeymoon was over. He'd been back in town for less than twenty-four hours and he was already looking to wring someone's neck. Ignoring his boss's orders, he'd left his bodyguard back at Langley and driven himself. He'd had some death threats lately, quite a few of them in fact, but despite the danger he needed some time alone to think before he met with the President.

He'd promised himself that he wouldn't allow his new position of influence to be wasted.

The whole reason he had this new position was that his cover as a covert counterterrorism operative had been blown during his boss's confirmation hearing by a congressman who had no admiration for the Agency, and now every piece of crap from Boston to Baghdad knew who he was and what he looked like. His face had been broadcast across the airwaves. He was called America 's first line of defense against terrorism. Virtually every newspaper in the country had reported his story and there had been several magazine covers. The entire thing was unnerving to him.

The media spectacle his career had become went against everything he knew. Most of his life since the age of twenty-two had been a secret. Not even his brother had known that he worked for the CIA.

Now, because of all the publicity before he even hit forty, he had been unceremoniously retired from the field, brought in from the cold and given a new job and a new title to go with it. He was now special assistant to the director of Central Intelligence on counterterrorism.

Terrorism had finally reached out and touched America, and her citizens were finally waking up to the fact that there were people out there who hated them, zealots who wanted to see the Great Satan toppled. The President and Rapp's boss, Director Irene Kennedy, had given him a mandate. In addition to working in conjunction with the Agency's counterterrorism center, they asked him to thoroughly study the nation's counterterrorism capabilities and come up with a recommendation on how to streamline operations and improve defenses.

Rapp's first response had been to tell the President to start focusing on offense. So far the President had shown no signs of following that advice.

Kennedy, knowing Rapp better than anyone, admonished him to keep his temper and tongue in check. She told him to look at the study as a fact-finding mission. The ass-kicking would come later when he gave his report to the President and the National Security Council.

That was when he could vent and let the truth be told, and Irene Kennedy knew better than anyone that the truth did need to be told.

If Rapp had learned anything during his lengthy study of America 's counterterrorism efforts, it was that there were too many meetings.

Too many meetings that accomplished nothing, and more often than not, created more red tape and hassles for the people who were on the front lines doing the important work. The meetings were a colossal waste of energy and resources. They never started on time and they always ran over, and that was the least of their problems. Now that he was on the inside, after spending more than a decade abroad working covertly for the CIA, he could see why so many in Washington thought the Agency had dropped the ball.

The Agency had become the antithesis of what Colonel Wild Bill Donovan, its founder, had designed it to be. It was a risk-averse haven for bureaucrats to put in their time so they could retire and collect their pensions. Sensitivity training and diversity workshops had taken priority over recruiting case officers with foreign language skills who had the chutzpah it took to run covert ops.

Thanks to Aldrich Ames, the FBI had been invited to join the Agency's Counter Intelligence Center. The brothers in dark suits had eviscerated the ranks of Langley 's few remaining good case officers, for the simple reason that too many of the men and women in the directorate of operations were mavericks. Never mind that mavericks, independent thinkers, were exactly who Wild Bill Donovan and President Roosevelt had in mind when they started the Office of Strategic Services at the onset of World War II. Donovan and Roosevelt understood that you didn't hire decent, respectable, risk-averse family men to spy on the enemy. You hired risk-takers who were willing to put their lives on the line to get a piece of information that might make the difference.

It was not a business for the meek, buttoned-up type. It was a business for daredevils who liked to gamble.

Signal and photographic intelligence now replaced eyes and ears on the ground. The billion-dollar satellites and ground intercept and relay stations were clean. They couldn't embarrass you the way a turned case officer could. They didn't bleed, they couldn't be kidnapped, they didn't lie and Congress loved them. The bright glossy photographs of terrorist training camps and scratchy audio intercepts of our enemies plotting to strike gave them great satisfaction.