American Assassin: A Thriller Read online

  "Then piss yourself, you big idiot." His head snapped to the group. "If you can't take care of your business and get out here in sixty seconds, I'm going to have to treat you like a bunch of toddlers ... so go ahead and piss yourself, Victor. The rest of you who need to go I suggest you wait until we head out for our run. You can pull over on the trail and take care of business. Now drop and give me fifty, and if I see any of you pussies cheating we'll start over."

  They did the fifty push-ups, followed by one hundred sit-ups, fifty up-downs, and then a few minutes of scissor kicks and a couple of stretches, and then Sergeant Smith led them into the woods. Eight of them in a nice neat line, with Victor trailing. Rapp guessed they were moving at just under a six-minute pace. He could keep a five-minute pace for ten miles, so he was feeling good. They finished the five-mile run and found themselves standing in front of an obstacle course in the middle of the woods. The place looked like a relic from an abandoned Renaissance festival. Sergeant Smith had his stopwatch out and was clocking them.

  Rapp positioned himself fifth in line, carefully placing one man between himself and Victor. He wanted to see how these other four guys navigated the course, guessing that they'd all done it when they'd gone through boot camp. His idea kind of fell apart when Sergeant Smith started sending guys at thirty-second intervals. The course started with a low wall. It was a ten-foot-tall wooden, moss-laden wall with two telephone poles stuck in the ground in front of it. The first telephone pole stuck out of the ground about a foot and a half and was four feet in front of the wall. The next telephone pole was two feet in front of the wall and stuck out of the ground three feet.

  Rapp watched as the first recruit headed for the wall, picking up speed. Right before the telephone poles he did a quick stutter step and then as nimbly as you could imagine, he placed his left foot on the first and shorter telephone pole, using it as a step. His right foot then landed on the second telephone pole and he launched himself up and onto the wall, grabbing the top with both hands and pinning his knee to the wall just a few feet from the top. It was like a controlled collision. The recruit was up and over, dropping to the soft ground on the other side.

  The second guy did it the same way, and the third tried something slightly different that involved doing a pull-up. After the low wall was a forty-foot dash to a fifteen-foot-high wall with ropes hanging on the face. There was nothing fancy about this one. You just grabbed the rope, put your feet on the wall, and walked your way up. Next in line was barbed wire. Again, pretty straightforward. Dive under, keep your butt down, and do an infantry crawl to the other end. After that was a forty-foot cargo net strung between two towering pines. Beyond that was a set of logs set up in a zigzag pattern about three feet off the ground. They acted as a sort of foot bridge to test your balance.

  Rapp didn't have a chance to see what came after the balance logs because it was his turn to start. He quickly dried the palms of his hands on his shorts, and then when Sergeant Smith gave him the signal, he ran toward the short wall, mimicked the exact steps of the first recruit, and threw himself up and at the top of the wall. He caught it, pulled himself up and over, and landed with ease on the other side. The second, taller wall was easy enough to navigate, and the barbed wire was about as primal as it got. If a guy couldn't grasp the simplicity of crawling he should just quit and go home. The cargo net proved to be the first real challenge. About a third of the way up Rapp realized there was too much slack in the middle so he moved over to the side. After that it was easier. The balance logs were a breeze, the tires were nothing, and the transfer ropes were playground 101.

  Then he came across something that looked like a set of uneven parallel bars, like the kind female gymnasts use. He paused, not sure how to attack the two horizontal telephone poles, and then almost on cue, one of the DIs was right there barking orders at him. Telling him what to do, and to do it quickly. Based on what the DI was telling him, it sounded like a great way to break a rib, but Rapp could see no other way, so he launched himself into the first pole and then the second and then it was more tires and a thing called the Burma bridge. After that there were more logs, ropes, and walls to negotiate and a sprint to the finish.

  When Rapp crossed the line Sergeant Smith was staring at his stopwatch and shaking his head. He glanced at Rapp, contempt on his face, and said, "You suck."

  Rapp was doubled over with his hands on his knees, acting more tired than he was. He wanted to smile but didn't. He couldn't have done that badly. The guy in the number-six position had yet to finish. Rapp turned to see how the last two were doing. At the edge of the course, about fifty yards back, he saw the blond-haired guy he'd seen on the porch earlier in the morning. The man was standing at the edge of the woods staring straight at him, again making no effort to conceal his interest.

  CHAPTER 12

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  KENNEDY 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. Si
nce 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

  THEY 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.