American Assassin (7 page)

CHAPTER
12
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

K
ENNEDY
parked in the east lot and entered the Headquarters Building at exactly eight-oh-three. She’d used the hour-and-a-half drive up from Lake Anna to try to prioritize her ever-increasing list of responsibilities, both official and unofficial. Much of her job was off the books, and that meant no notes and no files. She had to keep it all organized in her own mind, and every time she came back to HQ she needed to have her story straight. When the elevator doors parted on the sixth floor one of her bosses was waiting with a deeply concerned look on his face.

Max Powers nudged her back into the elevator and said, “Problem.”

Powers was the Near East Division chief. It had taken Kennedy a while to get used to his style. Powers was famous for speaking in one-word sentences. His colleagues who had worked with him over the years called him Musket Max.

Kennedy stepped back and asked, “What’s wrong?” Her immediate fear, as it was almost every time she entered the building, was that her black ops program had been uncovered.

“Beirut,” Powers said, offering nothing more.

Beirut could mean a lot of things, but on this hot August morning Kennedy was aware of one thing in particular. “John?”

“Yep.”

“Crap,” Kennedy mumbled under her breath. John Cummins was one of their deep-cover operatives who had snuck into Lebanon three days earlier. An American businessman who worked for a data storage company had been kidnapped the previous week. This company, it turned out, was run by a Texan with big contacts in D.C. The owner was old-school, former army, and over the past thirty years he had freely and enthusiastically kept the CIA and the Pentagon abreast of all the info he and his people happened to pick up in their international dealings. A lot of very important people in town owed him, and he decided now was time to call in a few of his IOUs.

The Pentagon had zero assets in the region and the CIA wasn’t much better. They were still trying to recover from the kidnapping, torture, and death of their Beirut station chief half a decade earlier. Langley did, however, have assets in Jordan, Syria, and Israel. Cummins, who had lived in Syria for the past three years, was the best bet. He’d built up some great contacts by passing himself off as a counterfeiter of U.S. currency and smuggler of American-made goods that were embargoed in the region.

From the jump Kennedy argued against using him. He was by far their most valuable asset inside Syria, and Beirut, although safer than it had been in the eighties, was still pretty much the Wild West of the Middle East. If anything went wrong Cummins would be lost. Someone with a much bigger title had overruled her, however.

“How bad?” Kennedy asked.

“Bad.”

The doors opened on the seventh floor and Kennedy followed Powers down the hall to the office of Thomas Stansfield, the deputy director of operations. The door was open and the two of them breezed through the outer office, past Stansfield’s assistant, and into the main office. Powers closed the soundproof door. Kennedy looked at the silver-haired Stansfield, who was sitting behind his massive desk, his glasses in one hand and the phone in the other. Stansfield was probably the most respected and feared man in the building and possibly the entire town. Since they were on the same team Kennedy respected, but did not fear the old spy.

Stansfield cut the person on the other end off, said good-bye, and placed the phone back in its cradle. Looking up at Powers, he asked, “Any further word?”

Powers shook his head.

“How did it happen?” Kennedy asked.

“He was leaving his hotel on Rue Monot for a lunch meeting,” Stansfield said. “He never showed. He missed his check-in this afternoon and I placed a call to my opposite in Israel. Mossad did some quiet checking.” Stansfield shook his head. “A shopkeeper saw someone fitting Cummins’s description being forced into the trunk of a car shortly before noon today.”

Kennedy felt her stomach twist into a wrenching knot. She liked Cummins. They knew all too well how this would play out. The torture would have commenced almost immediately, and depending on how Cummins held up, death was the likely outcome.

“I remember you voiced your opposition to this,” Stansfield said, “but know there are certain things that even I wasn’t told.”

“Such as?”

The ops boss shook his head, letting her know he wasn’t allowed to talk about it. “The important thing now is that Schnoz’s Syrian contacts back his cover story. If they don’t step up to the plate for him, this will end badly.” Cummins was half Armenian and half Jewish and had a nose to make a Roman emperor jealous; hence his unofficial cover name was Schnoz.

“Double down,” Powers chimed in. “Get the Texas boy on a plane with a couple suitcases filled with cash.”

“It’s a possibility that I already floated with the White House. They’re getting nervous, though, and for good reason.”

“They should be,” Kennedy said. “They just burned one of our most valuable assets trying to do a personal favor that as far as I can tell has nothing to do with national security.”

“Bingo,” Powers said.

Stansfield was quiet for a moment. “I have a back channel I can use with the CEO. He wants this employee back, and I think when I explain to him what happened to our man, he’ll offer to pay for both. It should help cement the idea that Schnoz was working as a freelancer.”

“It better happen quick,” Kennedy said. “We never know how long someone will be able to hold out. If they break Schnoz…” She stopped talking and shuddered at the thought of the damage that would be done.

“I know,” Stansfield sighed.

“Rescue op?” Powers asked.

Stansfield looked slightly embarrassed. “Not going to happen. We knew it going in. Beirut is still radioactive.”

“What if we get some good intel?” Kennedy asked.

“That’s a big what if.”

“But if we do,” Kennedy pressed her point, “we need assets in place.”

Stansfield sadly shook his head.

“Corner office or Sixteen Hundred?” Powers asked.

Kennedy understood the shorthand question to mean was it the director of CIA who was freezing them out or the White House?

“White House,” Stansfield replied.

“Our friends at the Institute.” Powers offered it as a suggestion. “They’re in the loop?”

Stansfield tapped the leather ink blotter on his desk while he considered the Israeli option. The Institute was the slang Powers used to refer to the Institute for Intelligence, or as they were better known, Mossad.”

“I’m told they knew before we did.”

“Maybe let them handle the cowboy stuff … if it comes to that.”

The fact that it had not occurred to him to have Mossad handle the rescue spoke volumes about the complicated relationship. “If something concrete comes our way I’ll consider it, but…”

“You don’t want to owe them the farm,” Powers said.

“That’s right. They would more than likely demand something that I’m either unwilling or unable to give them.”

“May I say something, sir?” Kennedy asked.

Stansfield wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it, but he knew he needed to let his people vent. He nodded.

“This problem is never going to go away until we send these guys a very serious message.”

“I assume you mean the kidnapping?”

“Yes.”

“I told the director the same thing five minutes before you walked in the door, but it seems we lack the political will, at the moment, to take a more aggressive approach.”

“Pussies,” Powers muttered, and then looked at Kennedy and said, “Sorry.”

“No need to apologize.” She paused and then decided this was the right time to push her agenda. “You know what this means?”

“No.”

“It’s yet another example of why we need to get Orion up and running. How in hell can we expect our assets to operate in this environment? It’s bad enough that we won’t get tough with these guys … it’s inexcusable that we won’t even consider a rescue op. He’s one of our own, for Christ’s sake!”

Stansfield was not surprised that she’d brought it up. He would have done the same thing if he was in her place, but during a crisis like this it was a common mistake to hurry things that needed time. “I want this to happen as badly as you do, Irene, but it can’t be rushed. If we send a bunch of half-baked assets into the field, we’ll end up spending all our energy trying to pull them out of the fire. Trust me … I saw it firsthand back in Berlin. Just try to be patient for a few more months. If a couple of these guys can prove that they have the stuff, I’ll greenlight it, and support you every step of the way.”

Kennedy took it as a promise but couldn’t get her mind off Cummins and what he was enduring. Her thoughts for some unknown reason turned to Rapp. She hoped he was the one. The weapon they could turn loose on these murderous zealots.

CHAPTER
13
LAKE ANNA, VIRGINIA

T
HEY
each ran the obstacle course three more times and then double-timed it back to the barn for breakfast. They stuffed their faces with eggs and pancakes, then were given thirty minutes to digest their food and make sure their bunks were squared away. Rapp was somewhat relieved that Victor used this time to pester someone else. Then it was off to the pistol range, which was a two-mile hike back into the woods. It was not a leisurely hike, however. They were given twelve minutes to get to the range and were told that anyone who was late could pack his bags. Rapp was starting to get the idea that they would be doing a lot of running, which was fine by him. He kept a pace or two off the lead and made it look as if he was struggling to keep up, but he wasn’t.

The range was adjacent to the obstacle course. It was twelve feet wide and one hundred feet long, and was as bare-bones as you could get. Basically a tractor had scooped out a ten-foot-deep trench that ran between a row of pines. It was lined with old car tires and covered with camouflage netting, which in addition to the tree branches made the light pretty weak. There were three shooting stations made out of pressure-treated plywood and lumber. Silhouette targets were already hung at twenty feet and silenced 9mm Beretta 92Fs were loaded and ready to be fired. The first three guys stepped up, and when Sergeant Smith ordered them to commence firing all three methodically emptied their rounds into the paper targets.

Rapp swallowed hard when they were done. The first two guys punched soup-can-sized holes through the chests of the black silhouettes. The third target had a nice neat hole about the size of a silver dollar in the center of the face. There was not a stray shot among the three. Rapp was impressed, but the thing that really surprised him was the reaction of Sergeant Smith. The instructor had a smile on his face.

Sergeant Smith stood beside the last shooter and said, “Normally I don’t like you SEALs, but goddamn! They sure do teach you boys how to shoot.” He gave the recruit a rough slap on the back and ordered the next three up. The results were similar—at least as far as the first two were concerned. They had both punched nice neat holes in the chests of their targets. Rapp’s target, however, looked a little rough.

Rapp lowered the pistol and took in his handiwork. He’d only started shooting a few months earlier, and without any actual training from an instructor, the results were lacking. The target looked like a piece of Swiss cheese, with holes from the chest all the way down to the groin. He set the heavy Beretta down on the flat plywood surface and grimaced as the instructors fell in, one on each shoulder.

“Definitely not a SEAL,” Sergeant Smith said.

“Nope,” Sergeant Jones replied. “Not a D Boy either. Might be a gangbanger, though. That’s how those little fuckers shoot. Just spray it all over the place and hope they hit a vital organ.”

“Definitely not the way we do things around here,” Sergeant Smith said.

“Son,” the taller of the two said, “where the fuck did you learn how to shoot?”

Rapp cleared his throat and admitted, “I don’t know how to shoot, Sergeant.”

“You mean you’ve tried and suck, or you’ve never been taught?”

“Never been taught, Sergeant.”

There was an uncomfortable pause while the two instructors tried to figure out what to do. Unfortunately, Victor took the opportunity to throw in one of his asinine comments. “He shoots like a girl.”

Underneath Rapp’s bronzed skin his cheeks flushed. He had known that, due to his lack of training, shooting would be one of his weaknesses. Still, it embarrassed him that the others were so much better. Rapp looked to Sergeant Smith and asked, “Any pointers?”

The shorter man looked up at Rapp and regarded him for a moment before nodding and saying, “Let’s see you do it again.” Sergeant Smith handed him a fresh magazine.

Sergeant Jones yelled, “All right, Victor, you jackass. Get up here and show us what you can do.”

The other five stood back and watched in silence while two fresh targets were put up. Sergeant Smith stood at Rapp’s side and quietly issued instructions. He watched Rapp squeeze off one shot and then reached in to adjust his grip, elbow position, and feet. With each shot the instructor issued corrections and the grouping of shots grew tighter. This time the holes were still loose, but at least all of them were in the chest area, as opposed to all over the entire target.

Rapp heard someone giggle and he looked over at Victor’s target. The clown had shot eyes and a nose in the target and five more shots made a downturned mouth. The remainder of the shots were concentrated in the groin area.

“Victor,” Sergeant Jones said, “what in hell are you doing?”

“Long-term strategic planning, Sarge.”

“I doubt your pea-sized brain could attempt any such thing.”

“Population control,” Victor said, spitting a gob of chew on the ground. “Shoot the nuts off all the hajis and no more baby terrorists. Twenty years from now we declare victory. Brilliant, if I say so myself.”

Sergeant Jones put his hands on his hips. “Put the weapon down, Victor, and step back.” The big man did so, and then Sergeant Jones continued in a disappointed voice, “Since all of you appear to be decent shots and Victor here thinks this is a joke, we’re going to head back over to the O course where I’m going to run all of you until at least one of you pukes. Our earnest, yet respectful virgin will stay here with Sergeant Smith and attempt to learn the basics of pistol shooting.” The big sergeant eyed the group and when no one moved he said, “Well, I guess you ladies would like to do some push-ups first.” In a gruff voice he shouted, “Assume the position.”

All six men dropped to the ground and got into the plank position. They were told to start and no one said a word except Victor, who continued to complain as they counted out their punishment.

While they worked through their push-ups Sergeant Smith began instructing Rapp on the finer points of marksmanship. Rapp listened intently, digesting every word. Sergeant Smith told Rapp to aim for the head this time. He slammed a fresh magazine into the hilt and hit the slide release.

“When you have a fresh magazine in and hit the slide release, a round is automatically chambered.” The sergeant offered Rapp the weapon and said, “The hammer’s back. So she’s hot. Not every gun is like that, but that’s how the Berettas work. Also that red dot right there … red means dead. So don’t point it at anything you’re not going to shoot at and always keep that finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire. Got it?”

Rapp nodded.

“All right, show me that stance. Keep those feet just so. You’re a lefty, so put your right foot a few inches in front of your left. Create the power triangle with your arms and place that dot right in the center of the head. Some guys get all hung up on breathing in versus exhaling, but I don’t want you to think about that crap. You’re going to need to learn to shoot on the run, so breathing in or out ain’t going to work. The main thing right now is how you squeeze that trigger. Notice how I didn’t say pull. Don’t pull it. Squeeze it straight back and put a round right through the middle of the head this time.

Rapp did everything he was told and the bullet spat from the end of the suppressor. The muzzle jumped and when it came back down Rapp was staring at a perfectly placed shot.

“Do it again,” Sergeant Smith ordered.

Rapp squeezed the trigger and the bullet struck the target half an inch to the right of the first one.

“Again.”

The third shot bridged the first and second. Rapp fell into a rhythm. He didn’t rush it, but he didn’t take too much time either. It took him less than twenty seconds to empty the rest of the magazine, and when he was done all of the rounds were within a six-inch circle—a jagged hole punched through the face of the paper target. Rapp breathed a sigh of relief.

Sergeant Smith clapped him on the shoulder and said, “You’re coachable, kid. Nice work. Let’s try this a few more times.”

Rapp was in the midst of reloading the weapon when by chance he turned his head and looked over his left shoulder. About sixty feet away, in the shadows of a big pine, a man was watching them. With the poor light Rapp couldn’t be certain who it was, but he thought it might be the guy he’d seen on the porch earlier in the morning. Rapp turned back to Sergeant Smith and was about to ask him who he was when he thought better of it. It would be a mistake to confuse a little one-on-one instruction with friendship.