The Survivor (23 page)

Rapp started for the exit but then spotted an iPad lying on the floor next to the dead spotter. He was going to stuff it in the waistband of his fatigues for Dumond to examine but stopped when the screen came to life.

It displayed four squares arranged vertically on the left. Three were blank and one was feeding video of the tree line west of the wall. Alongside each square were arrows for up, down, right, and left, as well
as a green and red button. He pressed the right arrow next to the live image and it tracked obediently north.

Rapp moved to a position where he could see the Gatling gun placement and tapped the arrow again. If the only man who could help them figure out Joe Rickman's plan weren't lying dead in the basement, he might have actually smiled. The gun obeyed his command.

Now the only question was how cautious the engineers who had set up the weapon were. Rapp would have had its range of motion limited but most people were less suspicious of technology than he was. It turned out Obrecht's men fit into the latter category. By pressing and holding the right arrow, Rapp was able to spin the gun 360 degrees.

He ran a finger down the green buttons on the iPad and watched two of the three other camera feeds come to life. They were gray at first, scanning the interior surface of the wall as the guns rose on hydraulic lifts. In a few seconds, both had cleared the barrier and were showing high-definition images of the surrounding forest.

Using the arrows, he spun the guns to aim at the ground floor of the building, concentrating on the points of entry.

“Get ready to move,” he said into his throat mike.

Coleman sounded a bit confused at what he saw as Rapp knowingly giving away their strategy. “This frequency's being monitored. I repeat, this frequency's being monitored.”

“In a second, it's not going to matter,” Rapp said, swiping the red buttons pulsing on the screen.

•  •  •

“South corner clear. One tango down,” Wicker's voice said over the radio.

“West corner clear,” Bruno McGraw followed up. “One man dead. All civilian employees uninjured and accounted for.”

Rapp could feel the blood flowing down the back of his flak jacket as he fireman-carried Stan Hurley's body down the stairs. The dust on the ground floor was thick enough to make it hard to breathe. There was a hole about nine feet in diameter next to the door, and a significant portion of the wall to the right of it had collapsed. Scott Coleman
was putting flex cuffs on a man lying facedown in a bed of shattered glass. At the other end of the room, the upper half of a torso was on its side in the fireplace. A quick scan of the demolished room didn't turn up the rest of the body.

“One more over there,” Coleman said, shaken by the sight of Hurley's body, but trying to hide it.

“That leaves one unaccounted for,” Rapp responded.

Charlie Wicker came on the comm a moment later. “There's a man running east toward the wall. I have a shot.”

Rapp gave a subtle nod and Coleman brought a bleeding hand to his throat mike. “Take him.”

“Affirmative. Tango's down.”

The man at Coleman's feet craned his neck around and looked up. Rapp didn't know him but the recognition—and fear—were clear in his eyes.

“You speak English?” Rapp said.

“Yes.”

“Louis Gould brought in a team to take out Obrecht,” Rapp said to him. “Your men killed Gould but not before he got to Obrecht. The rest of his team got away to the east. You're the only survivor.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? Because if I find out there was any confusion, I'll come looking for you.”

“There's no confusion.”

A siren became audible in the distance and Rapp started for the hole next to the door. “Cut him loose and get your men out of here, Scott. Rendezvous at location bravo. And get hold of Maria. Tell her about the change in plan and give her an ETA.”

Coleman nodded and Rapp jogged out into the sunlight. He had five miles of hard terrain to cover with a marginal knee and a hundred and fifty pounds of dead weight bleeding all over his shoulder. Somehow he'd always known that Hurley would get the last laugh.

R
OME

I
TALY

I
SABELLA
Accorso's nausea reached its peak when her daughter's school came into view through the windshield. She fought the urge to vomit, reminding herself that Bianca had promptly returned her text, as she always did. Still, for the entire drive, she'd been unable to fight back thoughts of police barricades, ambulances, and a single human form lying beneath a bloody white sheet.

The swaying of the car as she turned into the parking area almost pushed her over the edge, but then she saw her daughter leaning safely against the building. She was clutching her backpack to her chest, an expression of concern etched into her normally smooth face. Isabella had given no explanation when she'd requested that Bianca be pulled from class. What explanation could there be?

“Mom?” she said as she opened the car door and slipped inside. “What's going on?”

“Nothing.”

Isabella pulled away a little too quickly, once again checking the rearview mirror.

“Seriously, Mom. You're scaring me. Why are you here? Why aren't you at work?”

Isabella felt a tear starting down her cheek and wiped it away, trying to hide the emotions overwhelming her.

The man she'd met that day was deeply evil. She could feel it every time he turned his black eyes on her. There was nothing he wouldn't do to get what he wanted. He would have murdered her daughter and a thousand like her without a second thought. There had been no choice but to follow his instructions exactly.

“Is Dad okay?”

“Of course he is, honey.”

She didn't know that for certain, but saw no reason why he wouldn't be. They'd been divorced for four years now. Bianca's father wasn't a bad man, but he'd taken a job in Sweden and their marriage hadn't been strong enough to handle the distance.

“Is it because Dad's getting remarried?”

Isabella smiled. “No. I'm happy for him and Agda. Are you all right with it?”

“Sure. It doesn't matter. I hardly ever see him.”

“He's your father, Bianca.”

“I know. And I love him. But he's up there, you know? And we're here.”

It was one of the reasons Isabella had formed such a strong bond with her daughter. Bianca was everything to her. Probably too much. One day soon she'd be an adult and leave. She'd start her own life. Her own family.

For now, though, they were together. And she was safe.

“Is it something at work?” Bianca probed. “You didn't lose your job, did you? At the Christmas party, Mr. Cipriani said the firm couldn't run without you. I heard him.”

She'd been prepared for the subject of work to come up and didn't let the weak trickle of adrenaline show as she accelerated onto a two-lane highway. “My job's fine. Stop worrying. Everything's fine.”

“No it's not.”

Isabella tried to smile, but it came off as more of a grimace. She'd done everything the man had asked—wiping all trace of the anonymous client from the mainframe. There was nothing she could do
about the original copy of the instructions in the attorney's office and the man appeared to understand that. He hadn't seemed angry.

How could she be certain, though? Who was he? Why had these files been so important to him? He was well dressed and looked Arab or Indian but beyond that she knew nothing about him. Was he a drug trafficker? Did this have something to do with the heroin she knew was produced in the Middle East? If so, what business was it of hers? People wanted heroin. There was no stopping it.

“Where are we going, Mom? Home?”

She nodded. “So we can change. I thought we'd go out to dinner tonight. How does La Stiva sound?”

It was Bianca's favorite restaurant, but money had been tight for the past few years and they never went anymore. The budget was hard on her—young girls needed to fit in and that had become an expensive enterprise. She never complained, though.

“It sounds great, I guess. But what's the occasion?”

Isabella almost started crying again but managed to maintain control. The occasion was that her daughter hadn't been murdered.

“You're going to be a woman soon and we might not have time to spend together then,” she said, her voice sounding slightly strangled. “I thought it would be nice. We can talk.”

Bianca didn't look like she believed any of what she was being told but realized she wasn't going to get any more out of her mother on the drive. No doubt she was scheduling a full interrogation for after a bottle of wine had been opened.

They continued in silence and Isabella felt doubt creeping in. Was the Arab man really gone or would he come back for something else? Was it possible that he wasn't a drug dealer? Could he be a terrorist? Was she putting people in danger by not going to the police?

Ahead, she saw a semitruck approaching in the oncoming lane. It started to swerve, almost rocking up on two wheels as its load of concrete pipes shifted. Isabella slammed on her brakes and threw an arm instinctively in front of her daughter as the truck crossed into the lane in front of them.

N
EAR
L
AKE
C
ONSTANCE

S
WITZERLAND

W
E'RE
clear,” Wicker said, motioning the team forward and starting to run again.

Mitch Rapp released the tree he was using for balance and lurched forward, falling in behind Scott Coleman. His knee felt like it was full of glass and most of his right side had gone numb. Despite that and a number of offers of help, he'd carried Hurley's body the entire way by himself. He had been in command when his friend was killed. It was his responsibility to get him out.

They finally stopped where the stream took a hard bend, creating a deep pool that shimmered almost black in the late afternoon sun. Joe Maslick dropped to his stomach next to it, reaching down into the water.

“Got them.”

He pulled out two large dry bags while the rest of the men peeled off their packs. Rapp nearly fell trying to get Hurley off his shoulder and dropped the man's body unceremoniously into a pile of rocks.

“Scott,” Maslick said, throwing a duct tape–wrapped package to Coleman. He reached back into the bag and retrieved another, almost identical package. “This is you, Bruno.”

Rapp stripped and dove into the water as Maslick pulled out the bundle meant for Stan. A body bag.

The sudden cold and darkness was strangely comforting, and he stayed under for longer than he should have, reveling in the stillness. When he and Anna lived near the Chesapeake, he swam almost every day. It was one of the many little pleasures from his past that had fallen away.

When he surfaced, his men were cutting open their packages. Business suits, uniforms, and jogging clothes appeared along with wallets full of carefully forged documents. All the things necessary to separate and disappear.

Coleman tore the tape off the package meant for Rapp and tossed him a bar of abrasive soap. He caught it and used it to wash away the dried blood that covered most of his body. Wicker was the first dressed, and he collected everyone's discarded clothing, stuffing it into the dry bags. When he was finished, he headed for the road without a word.

Decked out in running clothes, he would do another ten miles on the shoulder before he got to the car waiting for him. It was a lightly traveled thoroughfare and having all of them drive out at one time could raise suspicion. Staggering the time and method of escape was more critical than getting out fast.

Rapp dunked under again, struggling to get his matted hair clean as Bruno McGraw slipped away in a tailored business suit. When Rapp resurfaced, Coleman was wearing a FedEx uniform beneath an apron and elbow-length rubber gloves. The ease and speed with which he got Hurley into the body bag was a testament to how much practice they all had in such things.

Rapp climbed onto the bank and toweled off, dressing in the jeans, collared shirt, and leather jacket laid out for him on a rock. It felt uncomfortable not to have a weapon, but his Glock was tucked away in the dry bags with the rest of the team's gear. In light of the recent fireworks, running into a roadblock was fairly likely and carrying a gun was too much of a risk.

“We're ready,” Coleman said. Everything, including Hurley, had
been consolidated into backpacks or bags and was piled up at the west end of the clearing.

Rapp glanced at his watch and picked up two of the packs. “Six minutes.”

They needed to ferry all of it to the edge of the road, where a van would pick it up.

“Mitch?” Coleman said, pointing to the side of his nose. “You missed a spot.”

Rapp wiped at his face and his fingers came back streaked with blood.

“Okay,” Coleman said. “You're good.”

They managed to get everything moved in just over five minutes. Another thirty seconds passed before they heard an engine approaching from the south. The FedEx delivery truck slowed and pulled into a narrow indention in the trees just as the second hand on Rapp's watch hit twelve. Next time he was in need of this kind of logistical support, Maria Glauser would be on his short list.

The driver opened the rear doors from inside, revealing boxes stacked floor to ceiling and a hatch open in the false floor. Rapp and Coleman grabbed the body bag first, sliding it inside the space that had been intended for a drugged Leo Obrecht. The driver helped them load the rest of the gear and then closed the well-disguised access door. After another thirty seconds of arranging boxes on top of it, Rapp retreated into the trees and watched the truck accelerate up the road with Coleman in the passenger seat. His blond hair and flawless German would minimize questions if they were stopped.