Vince Flynn - Order to Kill

“That’ll be a pleasure,” the pilot said, flipping a few switches above him. “Tell Scott we’re pulling for him.”

Rapp jogged toward the plane as the dust kicked up and the helicopter started rising into a darkening sky. The C-17’s four jet engines were already spooling and the cargo bay door was on its way up. Rapp grabbed its edge and flipped himself onto it, rolling to his feet inside.

He ignored Maslick and the corpsman trying to strap the nuke into a bunk and walked forward. There was a dividing wall near the front and he skirted around it before stopping at its edge. Coleman had five people working on him. IVs and oxygen were in place and his clothes were gone. Bloody rags that had been used to clean him up enough to search for hidden wounds were piled on the floor.

Rapp wasn’t sure how long he watched. How long he listened to the voices go from commanding to desperate and back again. The details of what they were doing, the meaning of what they were saying, was lost on him.

A scalpel flashed in the overhead lights and Rapp saw it slide between Coleman’s ribs. He just lay there like a piece of meat.

“Mitch?”

Rapp ignored the voice behind him and continued to watch the medical team work on his friend.

“Mitch? Dr. Kennedy is on the phone for you.”

Rapp turned slowly toward Maslick, who was sheepishly holding out a satphone.

Instead of taking it, he grabbed the man by the throat and drove him back into the fuselage. “I told you to get that nuke out of there! Were my orders not clear or are you just too stupid to understand them?”

“I’m sorry,” Maslick managed to get out past the pressure on his windpipe. “Dr. Kennedy overrode you. She sent us back.”

Rapp could hear her tinny voice shouting unintelligibly from the phone lying at his feet. The plane started to taxi and he finally released Maslick, shoving him toward the back of the plane. The former soldier retreated unsteadily as Rapp scooped up the handset.

“Mitch!” Kennedy said. “Are you there? Mitch!”

“I’m here.”

“Joe went back on my express orders. He tried to talk me out of it.”

“Not smart, Irene. The cops were moving in and we had no idea what their capabilities were. They could have taken down Fred’s bird.”

“There was no other option. I contacted President Chutani but he said there was nothing he could do to pull them back. General Shirani wouldn’t even take my call.”

“Then you should have left us.”

“I guarantee you that Shirani was going to force a fight. Video of you gunning down a bunch of soldiers before getting taken out by an RPG is just what he needs to stoke Pakistan’s anti-American elements. It might have been enough to turn the tide against the civilian government.”

She was probably right, Rapp knew. Her grasp of the intricate power struggles from Washington to Beijing to Islamabad was second to none. The nuke was safe, he was alive, and Coleman was in the hands of the best combat trauma people in the world. It didn’t help, though. His anger just kept building.

“So this was about Pakistan, not about me and Scott.”

“Of course,” she said, not bothering even to try to be convincing. “I consider both of you completely expendable.”

• • •

The plane’s wheels touched down and the engines roared as the massive aircraft came to a stop. Rapp didn’t move from his position on a cot bolted to the fuselage. He watched silently as Coleman, utterly still and surrounded by his medical team, was wheeled out the back.

It wasn’t their planned stop in Europe. The docs had told him that Coleman wasn’t going to survive long enough to get there. This U.S. air base in Afghanistan was the closest thing that had the surgical capabilities they needed.

He continued to sit, staring at the wall in front of him, until an air force colonel came stalking up the open loading bay.

“Who’s in charge here?”

When Rapp didn’t react, Maslick subtly pointed.

“Who the hell are you?” the man said, putting his hands on his hips and positioning himself in front of Rapp. “I got a call saying that a plane was coming in with a medical emergency. Nothing about on whose authority, where it was from, who was on-”

He suddenly fell silent and it was obvious why. The blanket had slipped off the nuke strapped into a bunk to his left.

“What the hell did you bring onto my base?”

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Rapp said finally. “You just need to make sure my man gets the best care available and call me in a fast transport to the U.S.”

With an expression of disgust, the officer examined Rapp’s filthy clothing, long hair, and thick beard. “CIA,” he spat. “Fuck you. You don’t walk onto my base and start giving orders.”

“Look, Colonel. I’m bone tired and we both know I’m going to get what I want. Why not just skip straight to that part?”

“You have confidence, I’ll give you that. Exactly why is it you think you’re going to get what you want?”

“Because I have a nuke.”

The man’s eyes shot toward the warhead again. “But where did you get it and where are you going with it? Because you’re not getting me involved in some bullshit CIA operation without authorization.”

It worried Rapp that he was actually thinking about killing the man. And not in some vague, theoretical way. He had his eye on a large wrench stowed against the fuselage and was picturing beating the officer’s skull in with it.

“Okay, Colonel,” he said, reluctantly abandoning the idea. “Then let’s get you authorization.”

He smirked. “What? From Irene Kennedy? I don’t work for her.”

The anger flashed across Rapp’s face and Maslick inched closer, putting himself in position for an intercept. The Delta man tensed when Rapp reached behind him, but then relaxed when nothing more deadly than a phone appeared.

“Would the president be good enough?”

“My ass,” the man said. “You Agency pricks are all the same. You swagger around and bullshit about how the White House hangs on your every word. I’ve been around way too long to fall for that.”

Rapp switched his phone to speaker and dialed a number that went to a private switchboard at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

“White House. How can I help you?”

“Could you put me through to the Oval Office, please?”

“Connecting you now.”

The still-unnamed air force colonel started to look a little uncertain.

“Oval Office.”

“Gloria, it’s Mitch. Is he available?”

“He’s meeting with the vice president right now. Do you want me to poke my head in?”

Rapp looked inquisitively at the man in front of him, who shook his head violently.

“No, it’s not that important.”

“Should he call you when he’s out?”

Again, Rapp looked up and again he got a vigorous shake of the head.

“No, I’ll just catch up with him when I get back. Thanks.”

By the time he disconnected the call, the anonymous colonel was already headed for the exit.

“Fast transport,” Rapp called after him.

“I’ll find the closest one and get it in the air,” he responded without looking back. A moment later he had disappeared down the tarmac.

“Helpful guy,” Maslick said.

Rapp stood. “Lock this plane down. No one gets on or off until we’re ready to transfer that nuke. I’ll be back in twenty.”

• • •

Rapp hated the smell of hospitals. It was a stale antiseptic stench that he’d come to associate with failure and loss. He walked up to a large reception desk and looked over it at a woman in a crisp air force uniform. “Excuse me, ma’am. One of my men just came in here.”

Her eyebrows rose a bit. “Are you the guy running our CO ragged?”