“Close enough.”
“Did you take measurements of the entrance wounds?”
“Not exact, but I’m pretty confident that the first three men were shot by a nine-millimeter.”
“And you know that how?”
Hayek held up a Ziploc bag with three brass shell casings. “I found these on the floor.”
“And the fourth man?”
Hayek shook her head. “I’ve looked all over this hallway and the stairs and I can’t find the casing.”
“Best guess on the caliber?”
“Best guess… a. 45… hollow point. Definitely not the same caliber that took out the other guys.”
Rapp ran all the information through his head, knew where it was taking him, but didn’t want to go there even though he knew he had to. He looked back in the office. There was no sign of struggle. Not a thing out of place. The hallway was a bloody mess. Rapp’s eyes focused on the Rorschachlike splatter. “I suppose the slug is buried in that wall.”
“Yeah… I was going to dig it out but I wanted to ask you first. I don’t know this team coming in from Langley… don’t want to step on their toes.”
It would be a problem but Rapp could deal with it. “Dig it out as quick as you can. Anything else you need to tell me about?”
Hayek hesitated and then said, “No.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head. “I’ll know more when I start matching up the blood samples with the bodies. I think we’ll be able to get a pretty clear picture of where everyone was when this thing went down.”
“Nice work, Sid. Do me a favor and keep this between the two of us. Until we know for certain, I don’t want anyone running around pedaling half-baked ideas. Anyone leans on you, send them to me. Understood?”
Kennedy had asked her to relay as much information as possible as quickly as possible. Hayek could see that she was caught between her two bosses, but Rapp was just starting to trust her, so she said, “Understood.”
“Good. Wrap things up and be ready to pull out in ten.”
“What’s the rush?”
“There’s a meeting back in Kabul. The whole alphabet soup.”
“You hate those kinds of meetings.”
“I hate any meeting, but especially this kind.” Rapp thought of Sickles running the meeting without him. Why the man worked for the Company was beyond Rapp’s ability to comprehend. “I need to make sure a certain idiot doesn’t make this shit show any worse than it already is.”
Chapter 6
U.S. Embassy, Kabul, Afghanistan
“I’ve never even heard of this man,” the woman said with obvious frustration. “Who the hell does he think he is?”
Colonel Hunter Poole took a final drag from his cigarette, then tossed it to the gravel and crushed it with the heel of his black jump boot. “I don’t know much about him.” “But you’ve heard of him?”
Poole knew he needed to be careful. Arianna Vinter was a passionate woman whose one glaring weakness was that she thought she could bully her way to any victory, and from what he’d heard about this Rapp fellow, it was probably not wise to attack him in a direct fashion. Poole shrugged and said, “He’s a spook. They don’t exactly advertise their resumes.”
Vinter regarded her military man with a skeptical squint of her hazel eyes. “You’re holding back.”
Poole played it cool. “I’ve heard a few things… the kind of stuff that doesn’t make it into official reports.” He lit another cigarette and said, “He’s notorious in certain circles.”
“Notorious how?” Vinter asked, taking a deep pull off her thin menthol cigarette.
Their liaisons had become increasingly common. The embassy was a crowded, cramped place, and smoking indoors by Americans was strictly forbidden, even in a country where virtually everyone smoked. And then there was the simple fact that they needed to be careful about their relationship. So they came to this corner of the compound where the multi-colored shipping containers were stacked. It was the hinterlands, where the workers and the occasional jarhead came to replenish supplies, but never the higher-ups from the embassy, and Poole and Vinter were definitely higher-ups.
Poole placed a hand against a rust-colored Conex container and thought about the various rumors regarding Mitch Rapp. The man, like Poole, was in his midforties. Unlike Rapp, however, Poole had a sterling record. He’d graduated in the top 5 percent of his class from West Point, completed Ranger School, and then blazed a trail through the big Green Machine with stops at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He was a platoon leader in the first Gulf War, and by the time the Iraq campaign started he was the company commander of Alpha Company, Second Ranger Battalion. He completed three combat tours with the Rangers, two in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. During his second tour in Afghanistan he was serving as an intelligence officer on the Joint Special Operations Command staff when he heard his commanding officer tell a story about a CIA covert officer who had bluffed his way into a detention facility at the Bagram Air Base by impersonating a U.S. Air Force colonel from the Office of Special Investigations.
A week earlier two high-value Taliban commanders had been caught on the battlefield and thus far had refused to talk. In less than an hour Rapp managed to get one of the men to spill the beans on an impending terrorist operation set to target the United States. The rumors about how he pulled this off were varied, but they all circled around some very Orwellian tactics that created a mix of awe and fear among the men at JSOC. There were other stories out there about Rapp, most of them from second- or third-hand accounts of his exploits in Indian country. If they were to be believed, Rapp was a person capable of extreme violence, with little concern for his own mortality and an absolute disregard for the political and legal issues that the men and women in uniform had to wrestle with.
Poole had followed the rules as any smart West Pointer would and he was now on the doorstep of receiving his first star-a lifelong dream, but that wasn’t where it was going to end. Poole felt he had the right stuff. Shooting for the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs was his ultimate goal, and if that worked out, who knew, maybe even the Oval Office was a possibility. Up until recently Poole would have found it difficult to understand a man like Rapp. Poole had been a rule follower, but Vinter had opened his eyes to the reality of Washington. She had shown him that there were times where rules were senseless obstacles. Rapp appeared to have built his entire career and reputation on the same philosophy. As enticing as it was to cut corners, Poole knew he needed to be careful. The U.S. Army was an entirely different playground. One misstep in the eyes of the wrong general and your career was over.
It was the fear of just that kind of misstep that caused Poole to temper what he knew about Rapp. “It’s not easy to separate fact from fiction where he’s concerned, but if you believe even half of what is said about him, he’s an extremely reckless individual.” The kind of man that could sink my career, Poole thought to himself.
“Dammit!” Vinter flicked her cigarette into the side of the container, sparks cascading to the ground. “The last thing we need right now is some brute from the CIA screwing this up. I’ve worked way to hard.” Vinter thought of her career at the State Department and all of the sacrifices she’d made to climb the ladder alongside all of the other scheming and plotting diplomats. She’d taken this god-awful posting in Afghanistan for multiple, complicated reasons and one very simple one-because it would further her career. Vinter hated Afghanistan. It was a country filled with people who were stuck in some ancient misogynistic culture that should have died a century ago. The place was filled with hocus-pocus religious fanatics, who had less respect for women than most men had for their dogs.
As much as it bothered Vinter that a bunch of bearded freaks could terrorize women with impunity while the U.S. government stood by, her boss had made it clear that there were other priorities. The orders had come from the White House that with the election bearing down on the administration they needed to accelerate the military withdrawal. The administration was looking for an excuse, any excuse that would satisfy the independent voters. For several years, Vinter had been pushing reintegration as a solution. The original term had been amnesty, but it
