ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN
RAPP eased out of the exit to the construction space and the night washed over him like a second skin. Though he had and could kill under just about any environmental conditions, night still felt the safest. The darkness slid across his body like a cool breeze. While his intellect understood that modern technology had in large part mitigated the advantages once offered by operating nocturnally, Rapp’s predatory instincts weren’t so sure. But darkness or not, nothing could hide the fact that Rapp now faced a tough decision.
He followed the alley south, toward the neon-tinged light brightening the passageway’s entrance. He paused just short of the swirling pool of pink, green, and red luminescence that marked the way back to civilization. Prior to his scheduled meet with FAIRBANKS, Rapp had reconned the warren of alleys that connected the commercial district, memorizing various routes to and from Sunrise Café as well as other destinations of interest.
Destinations like the hookah bar where FAIRBANKS liked to close out his evenings.
The bar beckoned from the far side of a series of shops that were laid out like a reverse number 7. Rapp was at the northeastern corner of the 7 while the hookah bar anchored the southwestern point. As with the previous strip mall, new construction was interspersed with the existing boutiques, restaurants, and cafés so that almost every other storefront stood empty. A pedestrian walkway of raised cobblestones spiderwebbed across the parking area separating Rapp from the bar and providing access to the assortment of shops.
He studied the hookah bar, considering.
Stan Hurley, Rapp’s mentor, had passed along many lessons to his protégé. Truth be told, though Rapp had operated alongside the crusty old field hand for almost twenty years, he still found himself learning from Stan. Besides teaching Rapp how to best kill a man, perhaps the most important thing Hurley had imparted was when not to kill. Specifically, when to temper the bias for action that ordinarily made Rapp so effective at his job. As Stan was wont to say, he hadn’t recruited Rapp to be a suicide bomber.
The life of a good guy for the life of a bad guy was never an even trade.
Though he wasn’t blown yet, Rapp was keenly aware of the two dead bodies cooling on the crumbling asphalt less than a kilometer away. The hookah bar’s bright façade was like a Siren’s song. Prudence dictated that Rapp turn left and head south another two blocks toward a strategically parked motor scooter and safety. FAIRBANKS was on borrowed time. Whether Rapp ended his life today, tomorrow, or a week from now wasn’t important. Agency analysts had penetrated the web of secrecy shrouding the businessman once. Given enough time and resources, the eggheads should be able do it again.
Should.
With a sigh, Rapp traded the safety of darkness for the neon lights.
He did not turn left.
CHAPTER 12
THE target should never be permitted to dictate the assassin’s actions.
Hurley had drilled this truism into Rapp’s head. An operative could not allow their feelings for the target to direct how far they pushed the operational window. At least not if the operative wanted to have a career that spanned more than just one kill. An unfavorable tactical situation was still an unfavorable situation whether the assassin’s target was Adolf Hitler or Mickey Mouse. Put another way, an assassin could not allow the evilness of the man or woman they were hunting to increase the level of risk they were willing to accept in order to hunt them.
This rule was inviolate.
And then there was FAIRBANKS.
Rapp lengthened his stride as he headed for the hookah bar, neither avoiding the shadows nor seeking them. He tailored his movements to match those of the shoppers milling in front of the storefronts and wandering across the cobblestone path. Irene had authorized this job in part to send a message to the Pakistanis, but there was a difference between a subtle tap on the shoulder and flipping your opponent the bird.
Rapp should know.
He’d done both.
Despite his calm appearance, Rapp’s heart began to accelerate. This was not because he enjoyed killing. Rapp was neither a sociopath nor a troubled soul looking for absolution. He dispatched terrorists with the same casual disregard a plumber showed when unclogging a stuck pipe. Killing was Rapp’s vocation, nothing more.
But FAIRBANKS was a special case.
Nine years ago, when the war on terror was still new and the depths to which America’s adversaries would stoop not fully understood, a brave journalist had traveled to Pakistan to interview a potential source for a story on Al Qaeda.
He’d never returned.
Instead, the journalist had been made to account for twin sins. He was an American, but even more egregious, a Jew. Instead of meeting his source for tea, the journalist was kidnapped off the streets of Karachi in broad daylight, made to release a captivity video, and then decapitated. The journalist’s execution was recorded, and the video was distributed on the internet by the jihadis who’d killed him. The journalist’s wife had been five months pregnant with their first child at the time of her husband’s death.
While FAIRBANKS hadn’t been the one to draw the steel blade across the journalist’s throat, the businessman’s money and connections had made the killing possible. If that had been the end of the ordeal, his actions would have still been more than enough to earn FAIRBANKS a spot on Rapp’s list.
It hadn’t been.
In recent years, FAIRBANKS had begun to flaunt his connection to the killing to increase his street cred among the jihadi sects. Even worse, he’d begun hinting that the ISI was protecting him from American retribution.
This had been a step too far.
In light of the recent terrorist attacks on American soil, Rapp had been authorized to visit rough justice on FAIRBANKS. While Rapp had no intention of decapitating the man on live television, he wanted to use the businessman’s death as a mechanism to send a message of his own.
Not all deaths were created equal.
Rapp reached the parking lot’s midpoint.
The large windows framing the hookah bar’s entrance offered an unobstructed view of the establishment’s brightly lit interior. FAIRBANKS was clearly visible surrounded by his two hulking bodyguards. The businessman was enjoying a booth to himself while the rest of the establishment’s occupants kept a respectable distance.
Showtime.
Rapp rolled his shoulders to loosen his muscles as he mentally rehearsed the series of events that would bring FAIRBANKS’s time on earth to an end. The pen loaded with neurotoxin still resided in the pocket of his sport coat, but the manner in which he would administer the poison would differ from his original plan.
As would the ensuing fallout from FAIRBANKS’s demise.
In the café scenario, Rapp would have met the financier under already established pretenses. The man’s death hours later would have been both hideous and directly attributable to poison, but the mechanism for the drug’s delivery would have been in question.
Not anymore.
Rapp was about to surprise FAIRBANKS. While he was confident in his ability to diffuse the terrorist’s suspicions long enough to clandestinely administer the neurotoxin, Rapp knew that his bodyguards would recall the unexpected encounter and draw the appropriate conclusions. Rapp’s face would be remembered, and his description disseminated throughout the jihadi network.
Never a winning proposition for an assassin.
