Vince Flynn - Consent To Kill

"What in the world are you doing bringing him a gun?" Kennedy was not happy.

Coleman ignored her. "I added the night sights and had them shorten the trigger pull."

Rapp pointed the gun toward the ground and squeezed the trigger. He nodded. "Thanks." Rapp set the 100-round box of ammunition on the table and began loading all three clips.

"Did you bring him a razor?" Kennedy asked.

Rapp scratched his thick stubble.

"You're not going to want to shave that just yet," said Coleman.

"Why?"

The former commander of SEAL Team 6 looked at Kennedy. She turned her soft gaze back to Rapp. "We've made some progress. The man who placed the bounty on your head was Saeed Ahmed Abdullah."

Rapp's dark eyes narrowed. "Waheed's father?"

"Yes."

"How solid is the intel?"

"For obvious reasons the Jordanians are not revealing their source, but they say the man has never let them down before."

"What else do we have?"

"Yesterday the NSA picked up a phone call made by Abdullah. We don't know who he was calling, but he was extremely upset. He told the person to finish the job or refund his twenty-two million dollars."

"Twenty-two million," Coleman said in disbelief.

Even Rapp was shocked by the number. "What did the other guy say?"

"We don't know. Abdullah was leaving the person a voice mail."

"Any luck with the phone number?"

Kennedy shook her head. "We don't have it. They only picked up Abdullah's voice from his end."

"Shit."

"We're working some other angles," Kennedy offered. "The vastness of his wealth is making it difficult, but we're looking for any transactions in the last month that might add up to twenty-two million dollars."

Rapp stared off toward the stables for a long moment.

"What are you thinking?" Kennedy asked.

"On Monday morning I'm going to need your G-5."

Rapp was referring to Kennedy's executive jet. "Just where are you planning on taking it?"

"Afghanistan."

Coleman started laughing. He looked at Kennedy and said, "You haven't told him yet."

"No."

"Told me what?"

"Your passport has been revoked, and I have promised the National Security Council that I will keep you under protective custody."

"Why?" asked Rapp in an angry voice.

"The vice president, secretary of state, attorney general, and the director of National Intelligence all convinced the president that you should be kept out of the investigation."

"What little investigation there is," Coleman interjected.

Kennedy gave him a look that said, You're not helping things.

"What's going on with the investigation?" Rapp asked.

"We'll get into that later. Let me first tell you what the president had to say to me in private. First of all, he is very sorry about Anna. You know he liked her very much."

Rapp didn't want to hear condolences right now and the expression on his face made it clear that Kennedy better get to the meat of the discussion quickly or Rapp's lid would blow.

"Officially, he doesn't want you anywhere near this investigation. Unofficially, he says you have his consent to kill whoever was behind this."

Rapp's rising rage subsided immediately. "So I take it I can't use your G-5 on Monday."

Kennedy shook her head. "I can help you, but you're going to have to run this thing in the dark. No official ties to the Agency."

Rapp turned to Coleman.

The former SEAL grinned and said, "I have a G-3. Not as nice as the G-5 but it'll get us from point A to point B. I also know a few guys who are itching to make a trip to Afghanistan."

"Monday morning," Rapp said.

"I think that's rushing it a bit," Kennedy said in a concerned voice. "You need more time to recover."

Rapp shook his head. "Monday morning. The longer we wait the harder it'll be to find them." He glanced back to Coleman. "I expect to be billed."

"Right after you kiss my ass," Coleman said stone faced.

"I'm serious."

"So am I."

"Scott, it doesn't feel right. If you and your guys are going to put it on the line you have to be paid."

Coleman knew Rapp well enough to know that he wouldn't stop on something like this unless he got his way. "I'll tell you what we'll do. When we catch these rat bastards, we'll split the twenty-two million."

"It's all yours. Just make sure everything is ready to go Monday morning."

"Don't worry, the boys are raring to go."

Anibal Castillo looked down at a map of Loudoun County and traced his finger along a road. He nodded to himself and then stepped out into the garage to check on the progress. Three identical black Chevy Suburbans were parked in the stalls. His men were busy getting them ready. For an illiterate thug who had not a single year of formal education and had been raised in the harsh poverty of a war-torn Third World country, Anibal Castillo was anything but stupid. At thirty-four he had never known peace. The first seven years of his life were spent with his parents and four siblings in the unforgiving ghettos of San Salvador where they were often forced to beg for food. In 1979 his native El Salvador was plunged into a brutal civil war and Anibal's father did his best to keep the family out of the fray. The next year Archbishop Romero was assassinated. The Catholic priest was idolized by both of Anibal's parents. Romero had been an advocate for the poor against a corrupt government and his brutal murder motivated many silent peasants to join the leftist guerrilla forces of the Farabundo Martн National Liberation Front or FMNL. Anibal's father moved the family to the central highlands and he joined the fight against the forces of the Duarte regime.

Anibal started off as a courier for the rebel forces and then when he was big enough to handle a rifle he became a soldier. Like most civil wars there were atrocities committed by both sides. Anibal's mother and two sisters were raped, one of his brothers had been captured, tortured, and shot by the government, and his father had been blown in half by a land mine. By the end of the war Anibal knew only violence. In 1995 he immigrated to America with his mother and two sisters. His surviving brother stayed behind and got involved in the drug trade. Anibal's family was sponsored by a group of Christian missionaries and ended up in the Washington area. Anibal never tried to find a job. Through his service with the FMNL rebels he was almost a de facto member of MS-13. Those first seven years in Washington had been easy. MS-13 was still under the radar of the FBI, and the DEA hadn't quite figured out how pervasive the gang was. The local cops thought they were just another Hispanic gang involved in drugs and car theft.

With fellow gang members either being killed or sent to jail, Anibal moved up the ranks quickly. At thirty-four he was now in charge of all of Prince William County and the majority of Fairfax County. Like Cosa Nostra before them, MS-13 expanded its operations into gambling and prostitution. If they had stopped there, they may have been able to continue unnoticed for quite some time, but they made two crucial mistakes. The first was that they got into extortion and kidnapping-two activities that tended to get the attention of the FBI. Their second mistake was to allow their gang-on-gang violence to spill onto the evening news and the morning papers. Law-abiding citizens, the ones who vote, didn't care too much when thugs killed one another, but when innocent people started getting caught in the cross fire they became incensed. Their outrage was then directed at the politicians, and the politicians, who tend to have acute survival instincts, came down hard on law enforcement.

The end result was that MS-13 was being squeezed by the local cops and the feds. Drugs became harder to move, and extortion and kidnappings were a good way to end up behind bars. Castillo was forced to focus on stolen cars, which was chump change compared to the other stuff. This mysterious man who he had dealt with only once before had shown up at the perfect time. His posse was getting restless. They needed some real action. Stealing cars was fine for the teenagers, but many of his men considered it beneath them. They needed to spill some blood and this was the perfect opportunity.