The Survivor (15 page)

With the scope to his eye, Coleman swept the courtyard below. This was undoubtedly the best seat in the house and he wasn't sure surrendering the high ground was a good idea. It was going to cut the effectiveness of his team by at least seventy percent, but there was nothing he could do about it.

A little less than a half an hour passed before Bruno McGraw's voice crackled over his earpiece. “We've reached the secondary site. Starting setup.”

Hopefully the radio signal reached Rapp—they'd identified a few dead spots on the way to the tunnel entrance. There was no way to confirm, though. Gould thought he was getting all the radio chatter and a response from Rapp would tip the man off.

“Roger that,” Coleman said.

It was another twenty-three minutes before he spotted an old Citroën driving up the road below. Stan Hurley had the window open, and
the cigarette smoke flowing from it was visible through the scope. Right on time.

A guard came out of the door-sized steel grate south of the gate and signaled for the car to stop. It was exactly how Coleman would have set it up. Don't let the vehicle get too close in case it contained explosives.

Hurley stepped out and held up a set of fake Interpol credentials. Coleman couldn't hear what was being said, but he could clearly see the irritation on the old man's face while he was being frisked.

Along the wall, the guards were all paying attention, but not getting overly focused on the man in case it was a diversion. Coleman let out a quiet breath. They looked to be even better than he'd expected. Reason number ninety-eight to hope that this didn't turn into a shooting war.

Hurley was led to the gate, where another armed guard let him through. After that, Coleman lost line of sight.

“Hurley's in. I'm starting to break down the shelter now. Should be approaching your position in approximately thirty.”

“Roger that,” Wick responded.

Coleman switched to the frequency accessible by Gould. “Hurley's inside the wall and we're ready to rock.”

T
HE
heavily reinforced gate swung open and Hurley shuffled through with a stoop meant to make him appear even older than he was. It didn't have the intended effect of making Obrecht's security overconfident, though. The man behind him maintained a careful interval and had his hands wrapped firmly around a Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle. The one in front kept the gate between them as Hurley passed. Ten yards away, another armed man watched through mirrored sunglasses. The remaining guards were focused elsewhere and were positioned in a way that would make the most of their manpower.

The gate closed behind him and he used the loud clang as an excuse to glance back. The wall seemed higher than the reported twelve feet and it was as smooth inside as it was out. There were strategically placed scaffolds along it, some hastily framed out of unpainted lumber and others more professionally executed from steel and concrete.

Cover was nearly nonexistent. The largest tree was about six inches in diameter, leaving nothing more than a few widely spaced fountains and a couple of parked cars. A sprint across that courtyard—particularly at the speed his new hip would allow—wasn't going to end well.

“Sir?”
the guard behind him said in accented English. “If you please.”

Hurley limped to an X-ray machine that looked like a more sophisticated version of something you'd find at JFK. “Is this really necessary?”

“I'm sorry for the inconvenience,” the man said in a tone that suggested he wasn't. “If you could please remove your jacket and shoes, and empty your pockets.”

He did as he was told and then turned to walk to the other side of the conveyor, but was immediately stopped.

“Your belt, too, sir.”

He smiled accommodatingly but felt a surge of nervousness as he removed it. It had been made to order in Asia back in the seventies. The buckle was secured to the leather by a two-inch-long metal strip that had been sharpened on all sides. It was sewn in with permanent stitches, but the pattern and thread were purposely weak. One hard jerk and it would break free, giving him a weapon that was complete crap but still better than nothing.

“A lot of security,” Hurley observed, trying to distract the man looking at the X-ray screen. The belt had been all over the world, passing through even Israel's airports more times than he could count. Still, this rundown was anything but routine.

“Yes, sir,” he said, not looking up. The conveyor paused for a moment and Hurley focused on the man's gun. It'd be a hell of a way to go out—grabbing the guy's weapon and spraying down the courtyard. Just wishful thinking, though. If he so much as raised his voice, they'd immediately harden up on Obrecht. The operation would be finished before it even started. No, if they questioned the belt, he'd tell the truth: that he'd bought it outside a Thai whorehouse before most of the men around him were even born. What did he know about how belt buckles were attached to belts?

It turned out to be unnecessary. His things came rolling out of the machine unchallenged while he was being wanded. A moment later he was fully dressed and moving toward the mansion.

The guard was two paces ahead as they started up the broad marble staircase leading to the front door. He had a sidearm that was within reach, but he wouldn't give it up easily. Even with surprise on his side, Hurley questioned how he would fare against the man. Twenty—even ten—years ago, he wouldn't have given it a second thought. A quick twist of the neck accompanied by the quiet crunch of vertebrae, and it would be done.

The chemotherapy and the hip surgery had taken more out of him than he let on, though. If Rapp knew the real extent of it, he'd have left him in West Virginia. But there was no way Hurley was going to fade away in a rocking chair while that piece of shit Louis Gould replaced him.

They stayed on the first floor, walking through a palatial entry hall lined with antique furniture and original portraits of people spanning a good five centuries. Most were probably Obrecht's ancestors and all looked like they were posing with sticks up their asses. Yet another reminder that crime actually did pay.

“Wait in here.”

“Thank you,” Hurley said, stepping inside a spacious parlor. “Do you know when Mr. Obrecht will be available?”

One of the few advantages of being his age was that hearing aids were expected. His were tied into Coleman's tactical radio setup and had microphones that picked up his voice as well as the ambient sound around him. He depressed a button on the key fob in his pocket to toggle the transmit function and broadcast the man's answer to Rapp. They wouldn't be able to coordinate the op to the second, but if Obrecht was as anal-retentive as he was reputed to be, they'd be able to nail it to within a minute or so.

“I don't know.”

“Could you give me some idea? I need to be back fo—”

The door closed, leaving Hurley staring at the ornately carved back of it. Prick.

He walked around for a few minutes, pretending to look at the expensive furnishings and finally settling into a chair near a set of west-facing
windows. Two guards were visible, but there was nothing to see that Dumond's drone hadn't picked up.

Hurley suspected the room was full of hidden cameras and microphones, making it a bit challenging to communicate. He stood and depressed the key fob button again.

“Just one time, I'd like it not to be hurry up and wait,” he muttered angrily, as if to himself. “I don't know how long Obrecht expects me to sit by the door watching the sun go down. Like I don't have better things to do.”

“Confirm,” Rapp said over his fake hearing aid. “You're alone on the first floor, windows facing west.”

“Yeah. Just great.”

“Understood. Stand by. We're three minutes from the tunnel entrance.”

Hurley began pacing, feeling the irritation he was supposed to be faking turn real. He was accustomed to being on the action side of these ops and being dead in the water while Rapp crawled through the dirt and Coleman set up sniper positions was driving him insane.

He got a little satisfaction from imagining opening the door and smashing that Eurotrash merc's head in with a priceless statuette. And the image of Rapp and that frog showing up to find Obrecht already tied and gagged was downright uplifting.

The mission he'd been charged with, though, was very different. Nothing more than confirming the banker's location in the house and keeping him occupied with conversation until the two younger men could come to the rescue. But that wasn't the worst of it. In order to create even more confusion, he was to act like a second hostage if they were confronted by Obrecht's security. The theory was that it would give Hurley the element of surprise, but he wasn't sure that Rapp really believed he was still capable of taking out anyone tougher than a Girl Scout.

He sat again, staring at a blank section of wall and thinking back to when the twenty-two-year-old Mitch Rapp had showed up at his
training facility. Some college boy lacrosse player who didn't know one end of a gun from another.

Hurley had wiped the floor with the sniveling little puke. And despite decades of friendship and countless ops, he'd like nothing more than to do it one more time before he died.

I
SLAMABAD

P
AKISTAN

U
MAR
Shirani, Pakistan's army chief of staff, unlocked the cabinet and pulled out a bottle of gin. The kitchen lights were off but the illumination filtering in from the hallway created a dim reflection in the window over the sink. At seventy-one, he was still a bull of a man. An expanding waist was evident behind the casual slacks and golf shirt, but so were the thick arms, barrel chest, and broad shoulders. The scar acquired in the 1971 war with India was still visible—a puckered line that started on his right temple and disappeared into his thick mustache.

Saad Chutani had no such scar. Nor did that pathetic fool Ahmed Taj. They were nothing more than useless bureaucrats. Bookkeepers whose talents were limited to flattery, intrigue, and speechmaking. They had never fought for their country. They would never shed a single drop of blood for Pakistan. All they could do was maneuver in the shadows, quietly chipping away at men greater than themselves.

Shirani put the glass to his mouth and felt the rare sensation of alcohol burning his throat. Allah had put a great hurdle in front of his loyal servant. He would understand.

The aging soldier exited the kitchen and started for his study. The
house was nearly ten thousand square feet, decorated and redecorated countless times by his young wife. The wildly expensive furniture and art had recently turned modern, and while he despised it, he knew it wouldn't last more than a few years. Soon she would use U.S. dollars meant for fighting terrorism to create a new theme.

The house seemed unusually quiet as he strode through it. His wife had wisely withdrawn to the east wing. She'd learned to read her husband's moods and knew that her presence would only create a convenient target for his rage.

But where were his security men? Had they too retreated in the face of his anger? Sometimes he thought the younger generation consisted of nothing but pampered cowards. How was his country to survive when he was surrounded by nothing but traitors and weaklings? Men like Saad Chutani and Ahmed Taj?

Shirani could not dispute that the president was a skillful politician. His ousting of the formidable former ISI director in favor of Taj was a first step toward bringing the powerful intelligence agency to heel. Underestimating Chutani's abilities would be extremely dangerous, but overestimating them could lead to paralysis. While in some ways impressive, nothing the politician had accomplished would have been possible without the constant involvement of the Americans.

The critical difference between Shirani and Chutani was that the president actually believed in America. He genuinely treated its leaders as friends and partners. He took their money like they all did, but instead of subverting it, he used it on Washington-sanctioned programs. It was all part of his twisted dream of turning Pakistan into a U.S. clone. Into a place where Shirani's daughters would be free to behave like prostitutes and Allah would become a quaint mythology.

Chutani was dangerous but also far too impressed with himself. While he had been successful in infiltrating Pakistan's intelligence apparatus and bribing the poor with public projects, his position was not unassailable. His American-sponsored drone attacks and commando raids had strengthened Pakistan's growing fundamentalist insurgency. And he was not the master of the army. Not yet.

The truth was that Pakistan had been controlled by a civilian government for too long. The country had a lengthy history of coups and the undeniable fact was that Pakistan performed better under military rule. The time had come to act.

Shirani climbed the stairs lost in thought but by the time he reached the top landing, the continued silence began to intrude. The army provided numerous servants and guards—men he'd handpicked for their skill and loyalty. While the size of his home had the ability to obscure them, it was unheard-of for him to travel its full length without at least a glimpse of the people tasked with keeping his household operating.

Shirani felt a dull surge of adrenaline. Had he underestimated Chutani? Had the politician managed to defeat his security? Was he looking to do something more tangible than just humiliating the commander of his army?

Shirani slowed, staying on the carpet runners as he continued toward the back of the house. The overhead fixtures had been removed in the last remodel, leaving the hallway lit only by weak, widely spaced lamps. He told himself he was being paranoid—that Chutani didn't have the courage to do something this overt—but it did little to steady his nerves.

He put his drink down on a low chest and opened one of the drawers. Inside, he found one of the many guns that had been strategically placed around the house. The mechanism was well oiled, and the round entering the chamber made almost no sound at all.