Vince Flynn - Consent To Kill

"Simple protocol…call ahead…let us know you're coming." The captain rocked back and forth on his heels while he assessed how far he should push this.

The agent gave him the courtesy of lowering his glasses an inch so the top two-thirds of his eyes were visible. "The director is a busy man, but I hear you loud and clear. The problem is we didn't even know we were coming out here until five minutes ago. We were leaving the new counterterrorism facility and he told us to come straight here. I'm just following orders."

The answer seemed plausible. "All right. Roll the windows down, get your creds out, and we'll make this as quick and painless as possible." The captain pointed at the lead Suburban and three men appeared from the blockhouse, one with a dog. The dog and his handler began circling the vehicle while the two men began inspecting credentials. The captain hesitated for a second and then went back to the limo. He waited patiently by the back passenger window for a three count, staring at his own reflection. He waited two more seconds and then rapped on the window with his knuckles.

The window came down revealing two white men talking on phones. One was in his fifties and the other appeared to be about ten years younger. The captain recognized the older man as Mark Ross, the new director of National Intelligence.

The younger man placed his phone flat against the lapel of his suit coat and said, "Could we speed this up, we're on a tight schedule."

"Absolutely," replied the captain. "Who is the director here to see?"

"I'm afraid that's privileged information."

The captain could already see this suit was going to be real fun to work with. "I need to see IDs, and we need to check the trunk. Then I'll have you on your way."

The man gave him a look that said, are you kidding me? "I said we're in a hurry."

The captain stayed calm and polite. "If you'd called ahead some of this could have been avoided, but unfortunately you didn't. Identification please." The captain stuck out his hand and waited. He collected the younger man's ID and wondered whether or not to push it with Director Ross. He decided not to when he realized Ross was talking to the president. He took the single ID back to the blockhouse to make a copy and run a quick check, while the men continued searching the vehicles. He didn't like any of this, but technically, he supposed the new director of National Intelligence was his boss. Less than a minute later he came back out, looked briefly at the limo, and then spoke to the agent in the lead vehicle.

"You guys under high alert or something?"

"Why do you ask?"

"You've got a lot of muscle with you to be driving around DC. Four guys in each Suburban and two more in the limo. That's about what the president travels with when he comes out here."

The agent pulled his glasses down again and said, "I don't ask questions…you know what I mean?"

Smiling, the captain replied, "To a point. I'm going to have the Suburbans wait over here in this parking lot on the right, and the limo may proceed to the main building."

"That'll work for me."

KENNEDY REMAINED ABSOLUTELY unreadable as Rapp went through his pitch. He had seen her stoic behavior unnerve subordinates, especially the younger ones-the ones who needed constant feedback and supervision. Rapp needed no cheerleading. He and Kennedy had been doing this for a long time. Normally, she would have been a bit more responsive to what he was proposing, but Rapp had brought someone to the meeting, so she remained her polite but professional self.

"The Pentagon, State…they're all throwing money around like a sailor in a whorehouse. We need to do the same thing."

Kennedy glanced at the other man in the meeting, who happened to be a retired naval officer, and then looked back at Rapp. "Throw money around like a horny sailor?"

"Absolutely." Rapp smiled. "The more money the better. That'll make it harder for the General Accounting Office and all those oversight pukes to track what we're really up to."

"Could you possibly come up with a better metaphor than the sailor/hooker one?"

"I agree," said the retired officer.

"How about a Marine in a whorehouse?" Rapp looked at the blond-haired man sitting next to him. "Does that work for you?"

"Absolutely. Marines are pigs." Scott Coleman laughed. The former Navy SEAL was in an unusually good mood, and it had everything to do with what Rapp was telling them.

Kennedy ignored the banter and got back to more pressing issues. "So, in essence, what you're advising is that we take Scott's company and use it as a logistical front for the new and expanded Orion Team?"

"Yes."

"That's been tried before and it blew up in the CIA's face."

"When?"

"The Vietnam War. You've surely heard of an outfit called Air America."

"I was in diapers at the time. Different time, different war, different world."

"I'm not so sure," Kennedy persisted.

"Air America got busted, because they got too big, and a couple of corncob generals at the Pentagon didn't like the CIA having their own air force. That combined with the press, the general mood on Capitol Hill, and the public's attitude toward the war…it all contributed to their cover being blown."

Kennedy raised an eyebrow. "And how exactly has anything changed?"

"Everybody, including and especially the Pentagon, are using civilian contractors, and they're not just hiring engineers to build bridges, schools, and hospitals. They're hiring firms left and right to provide diplomatic security, food prep services, cleaning services, trucking…you name it, and if it doesn't involve actual combat, the Pentagon is using private contractors."

"Scott?" Kennedy asked.

"I've seen my business grow from about two million a year to over twenty."

"Tell her about Black Watch." Rapp was referring to the private security firm that had been started by one of Coleman's fellow SEALs.

"They're going to do over two hundred and fifty million in business with the government alone this year. They have six thousand acres down in North Carolina that they've turned into a Disneyland for shooters. They have a race track to teach defensive driving, they have a state-of-the-art sniping range and shooting house, their own airstrips, planes, helicopters, armored personnel carriers…you name it. They have equipment that is forward-deployed around the globe. They've even built a damn lake to train SEALs on the underwater delivery vehicles."

"Their philosophy," interjected Rapp, "is that they can do it better and in a more cost effective way than the federal government."

"That wouldn't be difficult."

"Well, they're the first people to really try it, and they are succeeding."

Kennedy knew about Black Watch. The CIA already used them to protect certain assets abroad. There was a very liberal, antiwar minority in Washington who thought of the group as nothing more than a bunch of overpaid mercenaries who were eventually going to give America a black eye. Kennedy thought those people tended to have a naпve view of the world. To them, anyone who carried a gun was bad. Even cops.

"So, where I'm going with this," said Rapp, "is that we begin to use a series of companies to…" Rapp didn't get to finish his sentence because the door to Kennedy's office opened. He turned to see two men entering.

"Don't bother getting up," announced the new director of National Intelligence, Mark Ross. Ross was tall, thin, and well dressed, and exuded an air of importance. He marched across the long office trailed by a second, shorter man.

Rapp looked over his shoulder with undisguised irritation. He'd been in countless closed-door meetings in this office, and when the door was closed it was for a good reason-especially this morning. This was a first. People did not simply barge in on the director of the CIA unannounced.