Rapp eyed the protective detail with the disdain a well-heeled Frenchman would show a cluster of suit-clad ruffians who had deigned to interrupt his final espresso of the night. But underneath Rapp’s disgusted expression, he was evaluating the men with an assassin’s practiced eyes.
The detail was good.
Though Rapp rated Iranian Quds Force members only slightly higher than the black scorpion he’d mashed into his hotel room floor this morning, he did not allow his derision for who they were and what they believed to influence his assessment of their martial capabilities.
Only fools and dead men underestimated Iranians.
Mitch was neither.
The protective detail flowed across the open patio like an ocean wave cresting a sand castle. The six men were dressed in business formal—suits, lace-up shoes, and dress shirts open at the collar. The suits were high-quality, and the jackets were worn unbuttoned.
The bodies beneath were lean and hard.
Rapp had been killing men long enough to recognize the difference between protective details that used bulk to deter would-be attackers and those who relied on training. Thick-necked, muscle-bound ’roid-heads might dissuade drunk frat boys in a college bar, but they were ineffective against professionals.
By comparison, Ruyintan’s detail looked like a pack of hyenas.
The men didn’t attempt to intimidate through sheer physicality. Instead, their cold eyes and blank expressions did the talking. The two lead bodyguards swept past Rapp and continued into the café proper. The remaining four boxed Ruyintan as he ambled up the cobblestone sidewalk leading from the street to the café’s synthetic-turf-covered patio.
Rapp watched the procession long enough to make eye contact with the colonel before returning his gaze to his newspaper. The Iranian’s show of force was impressive, but Rapp’s legend proclaimed him a businessman who helped interested parties navigate tiresome regulations. The kind of regulations meant to curb the sale of illegal firearms.
Men with guns weren’t exactly a novelty.
“Pardonnez-moi, monsieur, aidez-moi, s’il vous plait?”
The Iranian bodyguard spoke in accented but understandable French. His lean build mirrored that of his companions, but his shoulders were heavier and chest broader. A middleweight surrounded by welterweights. He had a pugilist’s flattened nose, and his misshapen knuckles were crisscrossed with scars. His foot placement suggested boxing, but his cauliflower ears pointed toward a passion for wrestling. Either way, this was not a man to be taken lightly. The bodyguard stood a respectful distance from Mitch, but his posture suggested the question was not rhetorical.
Rapp decided to put this theory to the test.
“Non,” Mitch said, turning the page on his newspaper as he spoke. His semi-slouch radiated a disinterest that was starkly at odds with the tendrils of tension tightening his stomach. FAIRBANKS was nothing if not punctual. In just seconds, the Pakistani businessman would be rounding the corner, no doubt eagerly anticipating a nightcap at his favorite coffee shop.
Rapp had endured more oversight during the planning phase of this sanctioned assassination than the last dozen combined. As evidenced by the clandestine camera array and the voice that had been formerly whispering in his ear, killing a scumbag on the streets of an ally’s capital city was not an insignificant act.
Even toward an ally as fickle as Pakistan.
Sending a message was all well and good, but doing so effectively required a certain subtlety. Rapp was the first to admit that the word subtle was not a descriptor often applied to him, but in this case he agreed with the strategy. FAIRBANKS needed to die in a manner that left no misunderstanding as to the cause of his demise while still throwing enough doubt on the identity of the perpetrators to allow the Pakistani government to express public outrage while privately realizing they’d been given an ultimatum.
This message would be infinitely harder to send if the Iranian’s guard dogs ran Mitch out of the café. Ruyintan mounted the café’s steps and strode across the AstroTurf. But rather than heading for the coffee shop’s welcoming front door, the Iranian angled left.
Toward Rapp’s table.
CHAPTER 3
“EXCUSE me, sir,” Ruyintan said. “Do you mind if I join you?”
Rapp did mind.
Besides the fact that he could see FAIRBANKS’s gray-streaked hair as he meandered down the street to his left, Rapp had a thing about sharing tables with Iranian colonels.
But Ruyintan wasn’t one to take no for an answer.
Before Rapp could reply, the Quds Force operative appropriated a chair from a nearby table and sat. That the chair had only moments before held the same muscular Pakistani man who’d originally stolen it from Rapp seemed of little concern to the Iranian. Two of the colonel’s bodyguards emerged from the café and helpfully explained to the enraged musclehead that his latte would taste much better if he chose to finish it inside the café.
The Iranians’ persuasive words seemed to calm him.
Or maybe it was sight of pistols bulging from shoulder holsters.
Either way, the man stormed into the café, and his date got up from her seat and meekly followed. As the pretty woman drew even with Rapp, she graced him with a tentative smile and then disappeared inside.
When it came to women or chairs, there really was no accounting for taste.
A second pair of guards positioned themselves to either side of Mitch’s shoulders and the final pair faced the road.
“Sorry,” Mitch said, ignoring the skin-crawling feeling that adversaries in his blind spot always produced, “but I’m expecting someone.”
“Not just someone,” Ruyintan said. “You are waiting for a certain Pakistani businessman. He thinks he’s meeting Monsieur Dubois to discuss a rather sizable acquisition. But that isn’t so, is it? You might have a maroon passport, but the Republic is not the land of your birth any more than French is your native tongue. Your given name is actually Saeed. Farid Saeed.”
Ruyintan had been speaking in French until he’d arrived at the final sentence. Those words had been rendered in Arabic, perhaps to give the nom de guerre the emphasis it deserved.
Not much surprised Mitch.
This did.
Mitch returned the colonel’s gaze.
The Iranian was both as Rapp expected him to be in person and different. Ruyintan’s appearance basically tracked the dossier photos the CIA had compiled on the Quds Force expeditionary commander over the years. Though he was dressed in the same Western-style business casual attire of his men, it was clear that Ruyintan was not some boardroom banker.
Or at least it was clear to Rapp.
