Ruyintan’s coal-colored hair was sprinkled with gray and stylishly cut. His obligatory beard was trimmed close to the skin and his TV-ready face was that of a politician rather than a warrior. But a closer look at the wrinkles around his eyes and the sun marks on his forehead suggested that this was the visage of a man who’d spent the majority of his life outdoors.
And not the sort of outdoors associated with a country club’s golf course.
As the faint pucker on his right cheekbone could attest, Ruyintan led his troops from the front lines, not a cushy command post in Tehran. Though the blemish could have been attributed to childhood acne, Rapp knew the mark’s true source—a 5.56mm round.
An American 5.56mm round.
Ruyintan had sustained the wound in Fallujah, Iraq, when a Marine rifleman’s shot had cratered the stucco wall next to him rather than his skull. The metal fragments had just missed the colonel’s eye. Rapp had wondered on more than one occasion how many US lives might have been saved if the Marine’s aim had been true, but it was Ruyintan’s presence rather than his appearance that surprised Rapp the most. The air surrounding the Quds Force commander seemed charged with electricity. As if the Iranian were a lightning bolt poised to strike. Though he’d encountered them sparingly, Rapp had met such men before.
Dangerous men.
Ruyintan had begun the conversation in a manner meant to startle Rapp, which meant that he had an expected fraction of a second to decide how to respond. Maybe up to an entire second if he pushed his luck. For most people, a single second wasn’t much time.
Rapp wasn’t most people.
In the time required to draw a breath, Rapp ran through several potential courses of action. In his left breast pocket, Rapp carried a pen that, when triggered in a very specific manner, emitted 5 ccs of slow-acting neurotoxin. Since FAIRBANKS traveled with bodyguards, Rapp had expected to be frisked prior to their sit-down. As such, he was not carrying his customary Glock and suppressor, but even a man with Rapp’s abilities did not prowl the streets of Islamabad unarmed.
A knife featuring a four-inch ceramic blade and a 3-D printed hilt formed the latching mechanism on Rapp’s belt. The weapon would never win an award for sexiest killing implement, but it was custom-made for Rapp’s hand, easily concealed, and couldn’t be discovered by a metal detector. Rapp was confident that he could end Ruyintan’s life before one of his bodyguards intervened. What happened next would be a bit of a free-for-all, but Mitch liked his odds.
Even so, he did not give in to his homicidal urge.
Yet.
Over the course of their years working together, Rapp had grudgingly come around to Irene’s way of thinking when it came to the big fish. The men who ordered foot soldiers into harm’s way should be afforded the same opportunity to meet Allah as their underlings.
But sometimes, there was a benefit in delaying their departure.
Small fish were a dime a dozen. Big fish, on other hand, could serve as bait for an even larger catch. So rather than shove the dull end of his teaspoon through the Iranian’s right eyeball, Rapp decided to do something even more shocking.
Talk.
“What do you want?” Rapp said.
Following the Iranian’s lead, Rapp asked the question in Arabic, but unlike the Quds Force officer’s Persian-accented vowels and consonants, Mitch’s had an Iraqi flavor. In a turn of events that had delighted Stan Hurley and flummoxed agency linguists, Rapp spoke Arabic with a pronounced Iraqi accent.
A Mosul accent, to be precise.
Some people were born to compose symphonies or solve mathematical equations.
Mitch was created to hunt his nation’s enemies.
“I want to propose a way that our two organizations can achieve a common goal,” Ruyintan said.
The cloud of gray hair representing FAIRBANKS paused at the café’s entrance.
Then he continued down the sidewalk.
Rapp kept his outward expression blank, but inside he seethed.
His meeting with the Pakistani businessman had been the result of months of intelligence work. Untold resources had been dedicated to finding the man, developing a pattern of life, constructing an interdiction plan, and moving the required assets into place. And this was to say nothing of the hoops Rapp had to jump through to get this killing sanctioned. All told, the operation easily represented a year of Rapp’s life, and that year was now vanishing down an Islamabad side street.
Rapp was livid.
Farid Saeed was not.
Rapp had spent years perfecting the Saeed persona. A former officer in Saddam’s army turned illicit businessman. Most former Iraqi army officers chose one of two paths: criminality or terrorism. As members of the Baath party, the soldiers were Sunni in a Shia-majority country and quickly found themselves targets of Iranian-sponsored militias on the lookout for a little payback after years of suppression under the Iraqi strongman’s rule. With a choice between starvation or execution, it wasn’t hard to understand why these former soldiers rarely became upstanding members of the Iraqi community.
Farid Saeed was no exception.
“What goal?” Rapp said.
Rapp was genuinely interested in the Iranian’s answer.
The Saeed legend had been developed to provide Mitch with the freedom to move across the Islamic crescent without attracting attention. Rapp was not a traditional case officer. His efforts were dedicated to hunting men, not converting them to CIA assets. As such, he hadn’t tried to use his bona fides to penetrate terrorist organizations or recruit informants. That he’d come to the attention of Iranian intelligence was not surprising, but the fact that he was known by name by one of the Quds Force’s most dangerous operatives was an unforeseen but not necessarily unwelcome development.
Regardless of what the Iranian said next, Rapp was certain he’d have a ready reply.
“The goal of killing Americans in Afghanistan,” Ruyintan said.
Or perhaps not.
CHAPTER 4
MITCH Rapp did not commemorate his successes with notches on his pistol grip.
He might have begun his life as a paramilitary officer in no small part as revenge for the deaths of his fiancée and the two hundred and sixty-nine other innocents who’d perished after a Libyan terrorist had planted a bomb on Pan Am Flight 103, but that was then. Rapp had long since transitioned from killing as an emotional salve to killing as a way of life. Assassinating his nation’s enemies was a job that needed to be done, and he was uniquely suited to do it.
End of story.
