“You sure?” Rapp said, shouldering past FLACO.
“Yes,” Noreen said as she slung the bag across her shoulder. “These men can die of polio for all I care.”
With a final glare at the couriers, Noreen walked past Rapp and out the gate.
“What were you doing with that woman?” Rapp said.
“I told you, it was a misunderstanding,” FLACO said. The courier’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you here?”
“And I told you,” Rapp said, “I’m from HAZECO. There is a problem with your meter, and I need to check the electric hookup.”
“How do I know that is true?”
Rapp looked down at his shirt and then back at the man. “I don’t have time for this nonsense,” Rapp said. “Call my office if you’d like or don’t, I don’t care. Let me do my job and I’ll be out of your hair.”
The couriers hadn’t made any calls since the safehouse had begun surveillance, and the compound had no visible landline. Per the operational security one would expect if bin Laden really was present, the jihadis utilized a rotating series of public call booths at least an hour’s drive from Abbottabad when they needed to talk. As such, Rapp thought the likelihood of them calling his bluff low. If they did, Sullivan was prepared. The safehouse had a device designed to swallow all nearby wireless signals by mimicking a cell phone tower. If a cell inside the compound activated, the call would ring through to an Agency-employed Urdu speaker who would pose as a bored receptionist for the electric company.
Simple.
Unless of course the men decided to use a sat phone.
As if hearing Rapp’s thought, FLACO pulled a sat phone from his pocket.
The analytical part of Rapp’s mind absorbed as much information about the device as possible with the intention of relaying the data to Sullivan later. The part of Rapp’s brain responsible for keeping him alive went about planning how he was going to kill both men to ensure that there was a later.
FLACO flipped open the device and was preparing to dial when his fellow courier covered the keypad with his hand.
“Wait,” GORDO said. “You said there was a problem with our meter, right?”
“Yes,” Rapp said.
“Then let’s go see it. Together.”
GORDO’s fingers floated toward the back of his pants.
Rapp knew what the motion heralded, but a meter reader from HAZECO would not. So rather than react to this provocation, Rapp ignored it.
“Procedure says that I need to check the lines first,” Rapp said, making as if to move past the men. “In case there’s a break. Live electrical lines can kill someone who touches them.”
“Meter first.”
GORDO slid over so that he was shoulder-to-shoulder with FLACO. This time the meaning would be clear even to an employee of HAZECO. Rapp wasn’t going a step farther into the compound.
Unless he went through the men.
For a long moment, Rapp considered doing just that.
He still didn’t know if bin Laden was present, but he had zero qualms with dropping these two douchebags. The way they’d treated Noreen aside, both men were known Al Qaeda members and active couriers for the terrorist organization. As far as Rapp was concerned, both had been added to his list by way of their association to other shitbags he’d either killed or planned on killing. Sooner or later, their number would come up, and there was no time like the present. Rapp did the kill math with about as much effort as it took a normal person to decide whether they wanted a donut to go with their coffee. The men believed that proximity to their pistols, coupled with the fact that they were on home turf, meant safety.
They couldn’t have been more wrong.
Though Rapp was also armed, if things went kinetic, he wouldn’t be reaching for his pistol. The closest shitbag, FLACO, would get a punch to the throat that would put him out of the game.
Permanently.
GORDO would live about a half second longer only because it would take Rapp that long to close distance while flicking open his matte-black ZT knife. An eye gouge would cause GORDO to hunch forward, exposing his brainpan, which Rapp would obligingly turn into scrambled eggs with one quick thrust followed by an equally quick turn of the blade. Then it would be back to shitbag one. Rapp intended to help FLACO forget about his crushed windpipe by ventilating the courier’s jugular.
Two dead men.
Five seconds.
Call it seven seconds tops.
Rapp’s assessment was not a brag. He was simply providing an estimate in the same manner a good home contractor could eyeball a kitchen and ballpark the remodeling cost. Rapp was a craftsman and killing was his craft.
The eastern door banged open, and children flooded onto the hardpacked soil. A trio of boys chased two squealing girls. The five of them moved across the courtyard in a squirming jumble of laughs and shrieks. The leader of the pack, a brunette who looked about six, caught sight of the three men and screamed a single word.
“Baba!”
Father.
GORDO, who moments before had been dragging Noreen by her hair, turned and let loose a stream of Arabic admonishing the child. The little girl’s face transformed from a look of pure adulation into a thundercloud. Fat tears leaked from her eyes as she turned away, tiny shoulders shuddering.
Rapp kept his expression neutral even as he considered his options. While he did not kill women or children, this stipulation did not exempt dirtbags who chose to use them as human shields. On the other hand, Rapp also did not make messes, and this had the makings of a colossal one. The couriers needed to be removed from circulation, but this was not the time or place. Agency estimates had at least five adult males living in the compound. As much as he wanted to put the pair of jokers flanking him in the dirt, Rapp knew the difference between audacity and stupidity.
“You want to start with the meter?” Rapp said. “Fine. Let’s go.”
Rapp moved toward the gate. His skin crawled as he turned his back on the two Al Qaeda couriers, but it couldn’t be helped. He was still in character, and this is what a meter man would do.
