Vince Flynn - Order to Kill

His thighs felt like they were on fire but his lungs and heart were handling the workload with an ease that surprised even him. A carefully administered drug regimen increased his blood’s ability to carry oxygen to his muscles, but today that had been supplemented with an inhaled substance that he knew nothing about. He’d expected the performance improvement to be subtle as it had been in the past when his pharmaceutical cocktail was adjusted. It was anything but.

Azarov maintained his momentum through to the top of the hill and found himself on the top of a butte that jutted from the jungle. To his right, he could see the ocean in the distance and at his ten o’clock was a stucco-and-glass building that encompasses a little more than two hundred square meters. Next to it, a man in his late sixties was standing behind a table with a laptop computer on it.

Azarov pulled two custom pistols from their shoulder holsters as the man dodged right and grabbed a long steel pole. He swung it toward Azarov just as the Russian came to a stop and took aim at a paper target five meters away. On the end of the pole was a life-size silhouette constructed of aluminum to make hits clearly audible.

The man used it to try to interfere with Azarov’s aim as he fired both weapons at the target. When he was empty, he dropped one of the pistols and reloaded the other while moving left. When the magazine clicked home, he went into a two-handed stance and emptied the weapon into a target set up thirty meters to the east.

The older man dropped the pole and retreated to his laptop, squinting at the screen through the glare of the Costa Rican sun. “How did you feel?”

Linus Heis’s clipped German accent was no different than it had been the first time they’d met-when Azarov was a seven-year-old biathlete with dreams of making the Soviet Olympic team. It had been Heis who had found the slight heart murmur that disqualified Azarov and changed the course of his life. In subsequent years, the murmur had proved to be completely irrelevant and the scientist was still defensive about what may have been the only mistake he’d ever made in the field of human performance.

“I felt good. My heart rate seemed lower than normal at the top of the climb.”

“Fourteen percent lower,” Heis agreed. The approving expression was unusual for the stoic German. “And that translated into steadier hands. Your accuracy was one hundred percent.”

“What about my speed?”

The man’s barely perceptible smile disappeared. “You beat your personal best by two percent.”

“Two percent? Impressive.”

Heis shook his head. “It should have been three point six. Did something go wrong? Did you stumble on the way up?”

Azarov considered lying. There was nothing that infuriated Heis more than when one of his arcane calculations failed to predict reality. The purpose of this exercise wasn’t to make the old man happy, though.

“No. Nothing.”

“You should have been faster,” he repeated.

“I’m sure you’ll find the problem and correct it, Linus. You always do.”

The German folded his arms in front of his narrow chest. “I’m not so sure. Your shooting is excellent but your running is suboptimal. It occurs to me that firing a weapon is easy while running is hard. I wonder if the problem isn’t physical. If it’s mental.”

“I’ve taken more psychological tests than I can count, Linus. And I’ve been involved in more operations than I can count. There’s never been even a hint of weakness. You know this.”

“Things change, Grisha. People change. You’re not as young as you once were. We all slip eventually. But I admit that my concern may be premature. It’s three degrees warmer than when you set your prior personal best, and despite living in this godforsaken jungle furnace, you’ve never dealt well with heat. Or perhaps you’re just not fully focused. It would be understandable after what happened to Olga.”

Azarov resisted the urge to glance right. She was buried at the edge of the clearing, next to a man he’d inadvertently killed in a training session six years ago. It was a pleasant spot, with a view of the ocean and particularly vibrant flowering trees. Not that either of the two had cared much about the wonders of nature, but he felt obligated to do what he could to honor their memories.

“Is that it?” Heis probed. “Is it Olga?”

“Yes,” he responded, but it wasn’t true. It wasn’t Olga and it wasn’t the heat. It was everything else.

Anxious to change the subject, Azarov pointed to a pistol lying next to Heis’s computer. “What’s that?”

The man glared at him for a few seconds more but then decided to drop the subject of his pupil’s mental state for the time being. “A new weapon for you to try. Nadia is quite proud of it.”

Azarov picked up the gun and turned it over in his hands.

“It’s a full two centimeters shorter than what you’re using now. That should increase the speed of your draw significantly. Your current weapon takes too long to clear its holster. Also, the integrated silencer is three millimeters smaller in diameter.”

“Does it still perform?”

“Better, in fact. She’s reduced sound output by one decibel.”

Azarov aimed at the five-meter target. “May I fire it?”

“Of course.”

Heis was right. The report was noticeably duller. Balance was better. Accuracy and recoil were unchanged.

“It’s quite light.”

“Almost a twenty percent reduction in loaded weight,” Heis agreed.

“Drawbacks?”

“It can use standard nine-millimeter rounds, but to get the full benefits, it needs custom ammunition.”

“Durability?”

“If you use the recommended ammunition, she estimates that you’ll be able to fire two thousand rounds before you start to see a degradation in performance. With commercially available rounds, service life will be cut in half.”

“How much?”

“Seventeen thousand euros. Rounds are another eight euros each.”

Azarov stared down at the weapon. Mitch Rapp still used a Glock 19 with an AAC Ti-RANT 9S suppressor. A reasonably accurate and reliable weapon. A bit loud and long, but it had the benefit of being extremely common.

“I’ll take three. And a thousand rounds.”

“I’ll pass that on. Now let’s get into the gym. I have you scheduled for a brief strength workout before your swim.”

As they walked, Heis lectured him on the need to push harder, to go deeper. The drug regimen created a situation where his mind no longer understood the full capabilities of his body. He needed to learn to break through the limitations his subconscious was imposing on him.

Azarov was barely listening. His mind was consumed by Mitch Rapp. How would he perform on Heis’s tests? Could he and his technologically unremarkable Glock have achieved one hundred percent accuracy? In all likelihood, yes. But how quickly could he have completed the run? In his youth, he had been exceptionally fast. The X-rays Azarov had been provided, though, showed a new reality. Years of damage that had left him with thickening scar tissue and thinning cartilage. Would he be able-

“Grisha! Are you listening to me?”

Azarov smiled and bowed his head respectfully. “Every word, Linus. Every word.”

NEAR BHAKKAR

PAKISTAN

THIS time Rapp was in the left seat of the CIA’s Gulfstream G550. The negotiations to get this meeting set up had been short but contentious. The President of the United States had threatened to use his political clout to cut off every dime of foreign aid to Pakistan. Irene Kennedy, for her part, had made a number of more subtle threats that included General Shirani’s home address and a new class of stealth drone.