Vince Flynn - Order to Kill

News had a way of moving quickly on military bases. “Yeah.”

“Congratulations. No one knew he could move that fast,” she said, sliding a clipboard toward him. “Your man didn’t have any tags or a name. Could you give us his information?”

“Sure,” Rapp said. “How is he?”

“They’ve taken him into surgery.”

“With respect, ma’am, that’s not what I asked.”

“I know.”

Rapp nodded his understanding and picked up the clipboard. “Is there somewhere I can fill this out? Somewhere private?”

“We’ve got a little chapel down the hall on the right. Nothing fancy but I don’t think anyone’s in there.”

He followed her directions, pushing through a set of double doors before dropping the clipboard in a trash can and dialing Irene Kennedy.

He thought about the deaths of his wife and unborn child. About his brother, whom he hadn’t seen in more than a year. About his old friend Stan Hurley bleeding out in his arms only a few weeks ago.

And now Scott.

The line began to ring and Kennedy picked up almost immediately. “How is he?”

“Not good. He’s in surgery.”

“And the warhead?”

“Joe’s watching it. I’ve ordered up a transport.”

“You’re still planning on bringing it here?”

“We’ve been wanting to get a look at Pakistani nuclear technology for a long time. This might be our only chance.”

She didn’t respond.

“You disagree?”

“No, but I’m getting a lot of pushback from the Pakistanis. They know we have it and they want it back.”

“Call Chutani.”

“He’s one of the ones pushing back.”

“Bullshit. He’d be dead if it weren’t for me and that nuke would be in the back of a van with a bunch of terrorists.”

“Still, he’s the president of Pakistan and he’s trying to hold on to power. Shirani can use this against him.”

“Then stall. It’s not like we need it for a month. I’ll deliver it to Craig and tell him his tech guys have twenty-four hours to learn everything he can.”

“This isn’t like snatching some mid-level ISI operative or hacking into one of their computers, Mitch. This is a nuclear weapon. What do I tell them?”

“That it’s a holiday weekend. That my plane ran out of gas. Or maybe that if they don’t want us to take them, they shouldn’t drive them around in fucking fruit trucks.”

“I’ve briefed President Alexander and he’s given his authorization, but he asked some questions that I had a hard time answering. We know they have nukes. We know they work. How much are the details worth to us?”

Rapp let out a long breath. “There’s something not right here, Irene. Something we don’t understand.”

“What makes you say that?”

“A Russian mobster working with ISIS, for one. Why?”

“To get you out of the way so they could get their hands on a nuke. With Saddam Hussein’s former generals starting to take charge, ISIS tactics are getting more sophisticated. They have money and it’s not hard to believe that they’d use it to hire outside contractors.”

“But our information was that the people looking to snatch this nuke weren’t ISIS. They were al Badr. The two groups aren’t really connected.”

“Agreed.”

“And then there’s what happened to Scott.”

“What did happen? Was he ambushed?”

“Not in the way you’re thinking. It was one guy.”

“One man? Are you sure?”

Rapp dropped onto a bench. “I’m sure. And this guy went through Scott like he wasn’t there.”

“That doesn’t seem possible.”

“I’d say the same thing if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

“Did you get a good look at him?”

“Marginal.”

“And?”

“White guy around my size. Dark hair. Mid-thirties. Medium complexion.”

“You didn’t recognize him?”

“Nope.”

She fell silent for a moment, considering what she was being told. The number of people who could hope to even survive a confrontation with Scott Coleman was incredibly small. But to do it easily? If there was someone like that out there, how could Mitch Rapp have never run across him?

“Look, Irene. A guy like this doesn’t work for the Mob and he doesn’t take contracts from a bunch of half-assed terrorists. In fact, he doesn’t contract himself out at all or I’d have heard of him.”

“But you think he’s important.”

“My gut says that if we can find him, we’ll have the key to this thing.”

“The key? Or a target for revenge?”

Rapp ignored her question. “I figure there’s a seventy-five percent chance that he came up through a solid spec ops program. So, probably European. And since the Russians seem to have their fingerprints all over this thing, I’d start there.”

“What about the other twenty-five percent?”

“He could have been trained by the ops side of one of the intelligence agencies like I was.”

“That’s not a lot to go on, Mitch. Elite white soldiers in their thirties casts a pretty wide net.”

“One more thing to add to his profile, Irene. This guy’s an athlete. Maybe he stopped competing when he was young, but at some point, people noticed him.”

“So, gifted white male teens playing some sport in some country. Not that helpful.”

“Yeah, but again, we know that the Russians are involved. So I’d start with the former Soviet athletics program. Records still exist and people who worked in it are still alive. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

ABOVE SOUTHWESTERN VIRGINIA

U.S.A.

“WE’RE on our final approach,” Rapp said into his headset. “Could you give us runway lights?”

No response. They were coming in between two heavily wooded mountains, the outlines of which were barely visible in glow of the moon. The colonel whose name Rapp still didn’t know had managed to scrounge up one of the Air Force’s Gulfstream IIIs but, ironically, pilots had been in short supply. That left Rapp and his rusty flying skills in the right seat.

“I repeat. We are on our-”

“I can’t find the fucking switch,” a familiar voice interrupted. “Hang on. I think it’s behind this bush. Yeah, I’ve got it.”

Two rows of lights appeared to the north, outlining a runway that had been used probably no more than ten times since the Cold War. The pilot banked toward it and steepened their descent.

“Some genius,” Rapp said into the mike hanging in front of his mouth.

“What, I’m an electrician, now?”

“We’ll be on the ground in two. Try not to touch anything else until then. I’d rather not put this thing into the trees.”

“No problemo, man.”

Rapp glanced back into the cabin. The luxurious seats he was used to in the CIA’s G550 were conspicuously absent, replaced with a few frame-and-canvas benches bolted to the rear bulkhead. Joe Maslick had piled some blankets and cushions next to the warhead and was sound asleep with his head propped against the nosecone.

“Mas! Get your ass up. We’re landing.”

The former Delta operator jerked awake.

“Is that thing secure? We don’t need it chasing us around in here when we touch down.”

“We’re good,” he grumbled. “But there are better things to wake up next to.”

Rapp faced forward again and watched the approaching lights. Surprisingly, Maslick’s comment made him think of Claudia Gould. He tried to shake it off by telling himself that any relationship between them was doomed, but her image wasn’t so easily dismissed.

His relationships had always been a study in extremes. Maybe Claudia was the right balance. But was it worth the inevitable pain? The responsibility? The constraints? And more than that, was it fair? Anna was dead. Hurley was dead. Scott was likely dying. The people closest to him didn’t do well and Claudia was responsible for more than just herself. She had a young daughter who needed her.