Vince Flynn - Protect And Defend

Rapp looked over his shoulder and saw four of Stilwell’s Kurds approaching the Impala he had slid over when he’d first reached the intersection. Rapp waved his hand to get their attention and then motioned for them to stay put on the other side of the vehicle. He took one last peek around the fender of the Toyota and decided to make it quick. Rapp drew the.45-caliber Glock and put it in his right hand. With a gun in each hand he crouched and ran for the sidewalk. As he passed around the end of the first parked car, he hit the sidewalk and began sprinting toward the three men who were taking cover behind a parked car. They paid him no attention.

Rapp covered the ground in under two seconds. The men were talking among themselves, probably trying to figure out whether to grab their commander or abandon him. As Rapp drew almost abreast of the first man, he extended the silenced pistol, aimed it at the man’s right temple, and fired at near point-blank range. Before the other two men even realized what was going on, Rapp fired two more quick shots hitting both men in the face. Never breaking stride, he cut between two parked cars and charged at the last two men. He lowered the silenced 9mm and raised the.45-caliber Glock. Both men were kneeling. The man on the right tried to swing his rifle around. Rapp fired from a mere ten feet away and kept charging. The heavy round snapped the man’s head back into the Suburban. The man to the left was so startled by the shot he froze. Rapp closed the final few feet, and at the last second decided to take the man alive. He pivoted and snap-kicked the man in the side of the head, sending him tumbling to the ground. Rapp kicked his rifle clear and yelled for the Kurds to come over and help.

“Stan,” Rapp said, as he did a 360-degree sweep of the area. He looked at his watch; it wasn’t even noon. The president was more than likely in bed. “Send one of the Kurds down here with a satellite phone.”

The scene had changed drastically in less than a minute. The police and the insurgents were all gone. The gunfire had fallen silent. All that was left were dead bodies and broken vehicles. It was the aftermath of battle. Rapp eyed the two men he had shot in the knees. The policeman had rolled onto his stomach and was trying to crawl away. Rapp then looked to his feet at the four men from Kennedy’s security detail. They were all lying facedown with bullet holes in the back of their heads. McDonald wasn’t one of them. Rapp turned and checked the front seat of the Suburban. There was a body in the front passenger seat, but it was missing a face. Rapp knew it was McDonald. That was where he’d been sitting when they’d left the café.

The anger came boiling up from deep in his gut. Rapp made no effort to control it. He turned and eyed the pathetic piece of shit in the police uniform who was still trying to crawl away. Rapp raised the.45-caliber Glock and fired the weapon. The heavy round hit the man in the ass and blew out a chunk of his right hip socket. The man may as well have been hit by a bolt of lightning. His entire body snapped rigid for a moment and then he began screaming in pain.

Rapp holstered the 9mm, but kept the.45 ready. He pulled off his own hood and yelled for the Kurds to do the same as he walked over to the man the police officer had been talking to.

Rapp reached down to yank off the man’s hood. As he did so, the man’s right hand lashed out. Rapp stepped clear as the tip of a knife sailed wildly past his abdomen. Before the man could take another swipe, Rapp brought his right foot crashing down on his shattered knee. As he convulsed in pain, Rapp found the hand with the knife in it and sent his left foot crashing down with bone-crushing force. The knife was instantly released. Rapp kicked it clear and snatched the hood off the man’s head.

Rapp was not surprised to find a bearded man, with brown eyes, in his mid to late thirties. Wherever he had come from he was not Arabic. His skin was too light and brow too pronounced. He could be an Iraqi, but the pronounced brow and high cheekbones told Rapp the man was more than likely Persian or Kazakh.

“Where did they take her?” Rapp asked conversationally.

The man clenched his teeth and said nothing. Rapp stepped on his knee again. After a few seconds he released his foot and repeated the question, this time in Arabic.

“Fuck you!” the man screamed in English.

Rapp thought he caught a slight Persian accent. He answered the man in Farsi, saying, “I don’t think so.” Leaning in closer, he lowered his voice and asked, “Do you like being a man?”

The fierce brown eyes stared defiantly back at Rapp.

“The two of us”-Rapp pointed to himself and the man on the ground-“we’re going to find out the hard way.” Reaching under his shirt, Rapp drew his matte black ZT knife and dangled it in front of the man’s face. “That woman you just helped kidnap…she means a lot to me.” Rapp’s eyes turned crazed. “Trust me when I tell you you’re gonna tell me where she is.”

The man twisted his face into a frown and spit on Rapp.

Rapp didn’t even blink let alone bother to wipe the spit from his cheek. He took his knife and drove the four-inch blade into the man’s right shoulder socket. With a violent jerk he twisted the knife a quarter turn.

The man gasped at the sheer pain and then let loose a stream of profanities, all in Farsi.

The words confirmed for Rapp that the man was Iranian. Rapp leaned hard on the knife, and when the man opened his mouth to scream again Rapp stuffed the barrel of his.45 into his mouth. Bringing his nose to within an inch of the other man’s, he said in Farsi, “I don’t care how tough you think you are, you Persian piece of shit. You’d better hope for your sake that she gets returned quickly and she better not have a single mark on her, or you’re going to be eating your own nuts for dinner.”

They’d lost the Iranian Kilo. Halberg stood in the combat and control center of his sub, sweating profusely. He took a drink of water and silently watched his men work. They’d lost plenty of contacts before, but never in a situation this tense. His steel blue eyes darted from one screen to the next. A digital readout on the plotting screen read 14:32 and counting. That was how long it had been since the Kilo had broken contact. They were nearly three months into a six-month patrol and the men had conducted themselves wonderfully, until now.

Halberg had been in the engine room hitting the heavy bag when the officer of the deck had sent word that the Iranian sub had vanished. Without saying a word, Halberg peeled off his boxing gloves, grabbed a towel, and headed to the CACC. His XO met him at the plotting table and played back the tactical information on the screen starting two minutes prior to losing contact. Ten seconds of footage told Halberg all he needed to know. He saw what the Iranian captain must have done. The man had timed things perfectly. Just as he finished one of his lazy figure eights, he had made a dash across the outgoing channel and the bow of a heavily laden supertanker that was making a lot of noise and churning up a lot of muck. When the supertanker had finally passed, the Iranian Kilo was gone. They did a quick sweep and came to the conclusion that she had headed back into the strait sandwiched between two container vessels that were separated by less than a mile. Halberg ordered a new course and they fell in behind the second container vessel. As best they could figure it they were approximately two miles back from the Kilo.

The executive officer finished speaking with the navigator and then walked across the CACC to where Halberg was silently standing watch. In a hushed voice meant for only the two of them Strilzuk said, “I’m sorry I lost her, Skipper.”