Vince Flynn - Act of Treason

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 Russians 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 amp;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.

The climate had gotten so bad that Rapp couldn’t trust his own people at Langley. The CIA’s own Inspector General’s office had gotten into the game of leaking things to reporters. Senior officers were contributing to politicians’ campaigns, spouses were serving on advisory committees for candidates, and admin types were regularly dining and rubbing shoulders with journalists, lobbyists, and political strategists. Add to that Amnesty International and a dozen other human rights groups and you had a climate that was about as unfriendly to someone in Rapp’s position as you could imagine. He couldn’t even trust his own employer to hand him a secure phone, for at the end of the day, the Inspector General’s Office could be recording everything he said. In Rapp’s mind, there was no such thing as a secure line, so he went with the odds. Practically every month he bought a new phone from a major carrier and got a new number. And every time he went on a mission like this, he picked up a phone that rarely lasted the length of the mission. Even with all of the precautions he took, he was still very careful about what he said. He gave only the vaguest information and spoke in generalities.

When Kennedy finally answered, Rapp did not bother with greetings. He simply said, “I need a plane.”

There was a brief pause. “What kind of plane?”

“The plane.”

Almost as if on cue, the Russian started his running narrative again. Rapp looked at him, the gun in one hand and the phone in the other, his palms up and his arms out from his body a couple feet. The expression on his face seemed to say, You have got to be kidding me.

The Russian said, “I work for the KGB.”

Through his earpiece, Rapp heard Kennedy ask, “Who is that?”

Rapp said, “Give me a second.” He pressed the mute button on the phone and moved around to the side of the Russian. “I told you to keep your mouth shut, you stupid fucker.”

“I am Russian Intelligence. Former KGB. We are on the same side now. America and Russia.”

Gazich was immobile on the floor and no doubt in a great deal of pain as the adrenaline wore off and he was left with the searing pain of four gun shot wounds to extremely sensitive areas of his body. Despite his less than humorous situation, he started to laugh and said, “You work for the Russian mob.”

“I do not!” the Russian shouted.

Gazich laughed harder. “You are a bitch for the oligarchs and nothing else.”

Rapp was standing midway between the Russian and Gazich. If he didn’t need to talk to these two morons, he would gladly shoot them both in the head, just to shut them up. The Russian was craning his neck looking up at Rapp, babbling on about his distinguished career with the KGB. Rapp took another step, putting himself off to the Russian’s left side about three feet away. Rapp pointed across the room and asked, “You see that computer over there?”

The Russian looked away from Rapp and fixed his attention on the large off-white monitor sitting on the desk.

Rapp turned to the side and shifted all of his weight onto his left foot. His right leg came up and his torso leaned away from the Russian. Rapp’s leg hung in the air for a second; his hands were pulled in tight gripping the phone and the gun, his forearms and fists providing a shield for his upper torso and face. He did it out of habit, not out of fear of being hit. It was years of training. A simple side kick. Done properly it could be delivered with more force than any other blow. Done poorly it still provided quite a punch. Rapp hadn’t delivered a poor side kick in more than fifteen years. The toe of Rapp’s heavy soled shoes was drawn up toward his shin. His eyes were locked on the Russian’s chin like the three green dots on the sights of his Glock.