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TERM LIMITS
by
Vince Flynn
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POCKET BOOKS
New York London Toronto Sydney Tokyo Singapore
To Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, Leon Uris, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Ernest Hemingway, for inspiring me to live my dreams.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY
10020
Copyright (c) 1997 by Vince Flynn
Published by arrangement with Cloak & Dagger Press, Inc. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Cloak & Dagger
Press, Inc 1836 Wordsworth Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55116
ISBN: 0-671-02317-9
First Pocket Books hardcover printing June 1998
10987654321
POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.
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… Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the
Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government… it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.
— THOMAS JEFFERSON,
The Declaration of Independence
THE OLD WOOD CABIN SAT ALONE, SURROUNDED BY TREES AND
DARKNESS. The shades were drawn, and a dog lay motionless on the front porch. A
thin stream of smoke flowed out of the chimney and headed’ west, across the rural
Maryland countryside toward Washington, D.C. Inside, a man sat silently in front of the fireplace, shoving stacks of paper into the hot flames. The papers were the product of months of tedious and meticulous work. Each sheet represented hour upon hour of surveillance notes, in-depth subject profiles, and maps of neighborhoods throughout the
D.C. metropolitan area. He knew when the police patrolled, when the newspapers were delivered, who jogged and at what time, and most importantly, where his targets slept and what time they awoke. He and his men had stalked them for months, watching and waiting, patiently discerning which part of their daily routine could be exploited-and when they would be most vulnerable. His strong hands reached for the fire and stopped short. Letting them hang near the flames, he flexed them straight, then pulled them into tight fists. The men he had been stalking had sent him to some of the most obscure places on the face of the planet to kill people who were deemed a threat to the national security of the United States of America. He had lost track of the number of people he had killed in the service of his country. He had not intentionally blocked the tally from his mind, it was just something he had never bothered to calculate.
Whatever the number was, he held no regrets for the men he had killed.
They were honorless, evil psychopaths-killers of innocent civilians.
The solitary figure sitting in front of the fire was an assassin of assassins, an exporter of death, trained and funded by the United States government. His short blond hair glowed as he stared deeper and deeper into the flames, the crisp fire eventually turning into a hypnotic blur.
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Tomorrow he would kill for the first time on American soil. The times, places, and targets had all been chosen. In less than twenty-four hours the course of American politics would be changed forever.
The sun rose over Washington, D.C marking the start of what would be a long and busy day. With the President’s annual budget twenty-four hours away from a full House vote, the town was in a frenzy.
Congressmen, Senators, bureaucrats, and lobbyists were making a last-minute push to amend or strike certain elements of the budget.
The count was too close to call, and the leaders of both parties were exerting great pressure on their members to vote along partisan lines.
No one was exerting more pressure than Stu Garret, the President’s chief of staff. It was nearing 9 A.M and
