Vince Flynn - Order to Kill

“Answer my question,” Shirani said through clenched teeth. “Just where is it you think you’re taking my prisoner?”

“He’s our prisoner now,” Maslick said, following the script Rapp had given him. “I’m taking him to our base outside of Awaran. So why don’t you get the fuck out of my way?”

Shirani’s cheek twitched visibly. His men moved their hands a little closer to their weapons, waiting for the order to kill the insubordinate American standing in front of them.

“You’re not taking that man anywhere.”

Maslick hesitated and Rapp gave him an encouraging nudge.

“Hey, if you want to talk to Mitch, I can go out and get him. But if he has to come back in here, I can guarantee you he’s going to kick your fat ass up and down this hallway. I’ll bet that won’t play too good on your campaign posters.”

He’d finally pushed the man to the point that he was pretty much mute. Whether that was a good thing or not remained to be seen. What was certain, though, was that he was succeeding in the mission that Rapp had charged him with. He’d made the old soldier so mad that he couldn’t think straight.

As Maslick started forward again, Shirani, in a pathetic effort to save face, grabbed the man he thought was Eric Jesem and looked into his swollen face. “Take him if you want him. He’s given me what I need.”

Maslick’s normal strategy would be to call that a win and get the hell out of there before everyone started shooting at him. But that wasn’t what they were after here.

“He didn’t give your punk-ass interrogators shit.”

Maslick pulled Rapp away from the man and began dragging him toward the front of the building. “Now tell your people to get out of the way so Chutani’s guys can get a transport in. This man needs to be in Awaran by zero six thirty and Mitch and I want to be on a plane out of here in an hour. Is that understood?”

When they came out into the blinding sunlight, Maslick half expected to find fifty guys with M4s pointed in his direction. Instead, there was an armored van and a couple of men from Chutani’s elite guard. He handed his limp prisoner off to them and they literally threw him into the back. Maslick watched as Rapp slammed down on his cuffed hands and rolled into a bench. A moment later, the doors were locked and Maslick was standing in the cloud of dust left by the vehicle’s spinning tires.

He watched it pass through the gate and recede up the road for what was probably too long, then started toward a vehicle that would take him to a commercial airport. Apparently, the G550 was cooked. Rapp had trashed the landing gear with his little excursion into the desert.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Umar Shirani standing in the doorway of the building’s tiny office. The man looked like he wanted to carve someone’s heart out.

Mission accomplished.

THE van doors slammed shut but Rapp remained motionless, lying on the steel floor with his hands secured behind him. The motor came to life and the vehicle began bouncing painfully along the dirt road that led to the missile site’s outer gate. He rolled on his side, closing his eyes to keep blood from flowing into them. Maslick had done a skillful job matching the look of Eric Jesem’s injuries without crossing the line. As near as Rapp could tell, he had no significant damage to his ribs or joints, and his eyes were badly blackened but not so swollen as to interfere with his vision. Bruising on his torso was impressive, but no obvious internal injuries or slipped disks.

On the downside, he’d lost one tooth and a few more were clearly on their way out. The damage to his nose was severe enough that he wondered if he would ever breathe out of it again. And, finally, he was bleeding badly from a cut Maslick had carved into his forehead. An admittedly artistic job, though. It matched the one Jesem had in every detail.

The van jumped onto the pavement and the ride smoothed out as it accelerated. When Rapp was certain they were past any residual guards who might want to look in on him, he pulled off his cuffs. Maslick had used the tips of Jesem’s shoelaces to jam the locking mechanisms while Rapp recovered from a slightly overzealous kick to the stomach. Low-tech but effective.

The back of the van was brutally hot, probably close to one hundred twenty Fahrenheit, with ventilation limited to a few holes drilled through the sides. Soon, though, the sun would go down and the unbearable heat would turn to bitter cold. A good twelve hours of it, if they made it to the CIA black site that was ostensibly their goal. If everything went to plan, though, his trip would last nowhere near that long.

Maslick had done a solid job of winding up Umar Shirani-better than Rapp had imagined the former soldier capable of. The general would be blind with rage at being castrated like that in front of his men, which was exactly the reaction Rapp was looking for. It was unlikely that the old soldier would let that kind of humiliation go unanswered.

At this point, though, his power to retaliate was limited. The best he could do without exposing his role was to get in touch with his contacts at ISIS and give them the route of the van carrying their American compatriot. Shirani would deny the CIA their prisoner and any information he might have.

Rapp closed his eyes and did his best to drift off despite the pain radiating from virtually every part of his body. The heat and lack of water were going to do a job on him and it was critical to conserve as much strength as he could. If he was right about what would come next, he had to maintain as much of his physical and mental capacity as possible.

• • •

Rapp awoke just as the van’s driver slammed on the brakes-a split second too late to keep from sliding forward and smashing his head. Automatic gunfire erupted a moment later and he flattened himself against the steel floor as a few errant rounds rang off the vehicle’s exterior. The barrage grew in intensity, turning deafening when the men in the cab started to return fire.

Rapp’s head was still foggy as he crawled toward the doors and retrieved the discarded handcuffs. Opening one of the shackles so that it could be used as a claw, he slithered the rest of the way toward the rear. Shouts became audible outside and he threw his arms protectively over his head as rounds stitched themselves across the vehicle’s door.

They were clearly intentional. Chutani’s men would do what they could to make sure Eric Jesem didn’t live long enough to be rescued by his ISIS companions.

Rapp heard the handle rattle and he pushed himself to his knees. A moment later, the doors were yanked open and one of Chutani’s men was there, holding a Beretta in his hand. With nothing but two feet of air separating them, this time he’d get the job done.

The pistol rose and Rapp lunged, swinging the open handcuff toward the guard’s neck. By the time they collided, though, the man was already dead-hit by a bullet that entered his right side and exited the left in a cloud of blood and bone. They landed gracelessly on the road and Rapp rolled the corpse on top of him as guns opened up from a chase car stopped twenty-five yards back. The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, reducing visibility but not the temperature of the asphalt. Sticky tar penetrated his shirt, burning the skin on his back badly enough to force him to cast off the man’s body and run in a crouch for the road’s shoulder.

Bullet impacts sounded to his left and he adjusted his trajectory away from them. The blow to the head he’d suffered when the van stopped would have been enough of a disadvantage on its own. Combined with the heat and the beating he’d take from Maslick, his legs felt like they were going to collapse beneath him.