Vince Flynn - Order to Kill

“Russian?”

“Yeah. Spetsnaz. He was identified as an exceptional athlete when he was a kid and put into the Soviet athletics machine. Interestingly, he ended up in a sport you’re a fan of-biathlon. Turns out he had a minor heart murmur. The system spit him out and sent him back to the family farm. A few years later, he joined the military. Apparently, he strolled through spec ops training without breaking a sweat and tested extraordinarily high on intelligence tests. After distinguishing himself in a few operations, he left the military and disappeared. Our guess is that he caught the eye of Russia’s new president.”

“Krupin,” Coleman said.

“It makes perfect sense,” Irene Kennedy interjected. “Krupin was consolidating his power at the time and Filipov would have been just the kind of person he would have needed-young, talented, and relatively anonymous.”

“Do you know where he is?” Coleman said.

“Not yet. But we’ll find him.”

“When you do, don’t get anywhere near him, Mike. Take it from me. Drone that asshole from the stratosphere.”

“That’s up to Mitch.”

Coleman opened his mouth to say something but fell silent when a timid knock sounded on the door. Irene Kennedy glanced at the glass wall and saw Claudia Gould peeking through. She waved her in.

“Are they bothering you?” Claudia said, taking a position by Coleman’s side and adjusting his pillows.

“Definitely,” he said. “I think you should throw them out in the street.”

She frowned at them. “Are you talking business? You know the doctors said not to upset him. He needs rest.”

Kennedy rose and motioned for Nash to do the same. “You’re right. We’ve overstayed our welcome. Claudia, I have to get back to the office. You have my personal number as well as Mike’s. If there’s problem-any problem at all-you should call one of us immediately.”

“I understand.”

The young woman reached for the tablet but then froze with her fingers still a few inches away.

“Claudia?” Kennedy said. “Are you all right?”

“Grisha Azarov,” she said, sounding a bit startled. “Was it him, Scott? Did he do this to you?”

“What did you say?” Nash asked. “Azarov? We have his name as Filipov.”

“No,” Claudia said. “Not Filipov. Not for many years.”

“You know this man?” Kennedy said.

She suddenly took on a bit of a deer-in-the-headlights expression. “No… No, I-”

“Calm down,” Kennedy said. “You’re among friends. Everyone in his room knows who you are.”

“I’m not that person anymore.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. Who you were . Now, do you know this man?”

She chewed her lower lip for a moment and nodded. “Louis ran into him years ago in Belarus. He never told me the details of what happened, but I know this: There are only two men in the world my husband was afraid of. Mitch and Grisha Azarov.”

“Did you create a file on him?”

“Of course. Louis wanted to know everything in case they ever met again.”

“And can you still access that file?”

“Yes. From my computer. It’s in Mitch’s apartment.”

Nash grabbed the tablet off the bed and put a hand on Claudia’s back. “Why don’t we head on over to Mitch’s place, then? You probably need to pick up a few things anyway.”

“But what about Scott?” Claudia protested as Nash pushed her toward the door.

“No need to worry,” Kennedy called after her. “I won’t leave until you get back.”

LOCATION UNKNOWN

RAPP shifted the limp woman to a more stable position on his shoulder and pushed through the door to Eric Jesem’s apartment. He’d been careful when cutting off her air, doing just enough to put her down and keep her from going completely nuts on their way back through the crowd. At this point, it was almost certain that she was faking unconsciousness. Patiently waiting for an opportunity to take his head off.

“Hello?” he called.

No answer. The woman who’d patched him up must have belonged to someone else.

Rapp went straight to the bedroom-as the girl he was carrying would have expected-but then just dumped her on the bed and headed for the kitchen. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten and it’d be nice to take in a few calories before she started chasing him around the apartment.

The kitchen was barely big enough to walk through sideways, but a cursory search turned up a few packages of the Middle East’s answer to ramen. Good in a pinch, but not his first choice. A little more effort rewarded him with a stash of American-supplied MREs hidden beneath a broken stove. Normally, finding U.S. supplies in the hands of terrorists irritated the shit out of him, but today he wasn’t complaining. He dug through the packages, finally locating the Mexican chicken he was hoping for.

Surprisingly, the sink worked, so he put some water in the heater bag and then made himself a PB &J. Chewing it carefully so as not to dislodge any more teeth, he walked back into the main room. Furniture was limited to a couple rickety chairs and a TV sitting unplugged on the floor. Rapp flipped a wall switch and got the expected nothing. There were two lamps in a corner, one battery-powered and the other hooked up to a gas canister. More interesting was the cell phone plugged into a solar charger on the sill of the apartment’s only window.

He turned it on and confirmed that there was no signal. A lot of the area’s cellular capacity had been taken out in the fighting and what was left was being jammed by the U.S. military. A quick scroll through Jesem’s emails and texts turned up nothing of interest. Phone records were completely blank. It was likely that Marcus Dumond back at Langley could dig up all kinds of useful information on the device, but Rapp’s technological skills were limited to the basics.

There was a box under one of the chairs and he went through it, finding Jesem’s U.S. passport, a few personal effects, and some porn. Not exactly a treasure trove of actionable intel. Nothing about his life, his mission in Pakistan, or ISIS’s plans for the fissile material they had stolen. And Rapp still didn’t know where the hell he was.

The drawers in the bathroom contained little more than a toothbrush and some paste. He closed the warped door as best he could and leaned into a cracked mirror. The face staring back at him was about what he’d expected: split lips, blackened eyes, and a battered nose beneath a stitched forehead.

It wasn’t as bad as it had been when Maslick originally did the job, though. One of Rapp’s many strengths was his ability to heal. In this case that talent was working against him. The comic-book puffiness around his eyes had already subsided appreciably and the discoloration where his cheeks emerged from his beard was fading.

Worse, though, was the nose. His looked nothing like Eric Jesem’s and Maslick had been forced to break it to obscure that fact. Unfortunately, the woman who had done such a thorough job cleaning up Rapp’s wounds had done an equally thorough job straightening his nose. Another few days and anyone who knew Jesem would start to see through the damage.

His experience with purposely injuring himself was pretty limited and he looked around the bathroom, trying to find something he could use. The toilet seat seemed promising initially, but it turned out to be too light and flimsy. The sink also captured his attention for a moment, but the wall overhung it in a way that would limit his momentum. And then there was the issue of explaining why his face was getting worse instead of better.

A moment later, the solution to his problems kicked open the bathroom door. He ducked instinctively and the battery-powered lamp went arcing over his head, slamming into the wall above an empty towel rack. The young woman pulled it back for another attempt and Rapp started to recognize the opportunity she represented.