Kill Shot

“My name isn’t Victor.”

“It is now. Let’s go.”

That was three years ago, and at first Chet wasn’t sure about his new line of work. He was grateful to have avoided going to jail, but he wasn’t too thrilled that he was no longer a member of the world’s most elite commando team. Before he knew it, though, Chet could see he had found the perfect place and the ultimate mentor. No more saluting, no more rules, and the best part—he got to kill people.

Bramble looked above the monitors at the photos taped to the wall of the van. There were five of them. The first one was a simple headshot, black and white. It made Bramble hate Rapp even more. The man was ruggedly handsome. Where Bramble had to chase pussy, it seemed to fall into Rapp’s lap. To add insult to the whole thing, the jerk seemed to always turn it down. “I hate you, you arrogant prick.”

Bramble wondered where Hurley had gotten the photo. They weren’t big on photos in this line of work— especially posed photos. The other four were all surveillance pics, one of them taken on this exact block in Paris, right in front of the safe house. Again, how it had been obtained, and why, gave Bramble a healthy dose of concern. Hurley or that twat Kennedy had ordered the surveillance on Rapp. No, he thought to himself, she loves him too much. He’s her little pet. She would never put him under surveillance.

It had to be Hurley. He was a smart fucker. At times Bramble thought the tough SOB hated Rapp almost as much as he did. He wants me to kill him, Bramble thought. He wants me to rid him of this problem and I’m going to be more than happy to oblige him.

CHAPTER 18

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

IRENE Kennedy was sitting in the sunroom of her two-bedroom brownstone in Old Town. Her husband was out training for yet another marathon while she was midway through her second newspaper and her third cup of tea. Her marriage could be better, but it could just as easily be worse. There was no shouting or violence, but there was an unstated truce and an underlying knowledge that they did not love each other more today than they had the year before. Kennedy was wrapped up in her work, and he was wrapped up in himself, and she couldn’t decide if she should stick with it or move on. Divorce was a messy, protracted battle, and besides, she wasn’t the kind of person who quit something so important so easily.

There was a fair amount of self-recrimination over her lack of effort, but her job afforded her little time to come up for air, and, as she’d learned over the years, her husband was hardly the kind of person who would meet her halfway. He was basically a spoiled, selfish boy who refused to grow up. This was all lost on her when they were dating—when things were easy. He was turned on by the fact that she worked for the CIA, and she was turned on by the fact that he was a good-looking, smart man who made her laugh. He was a college professor who had a very flexible schedule, which worked well for her. When they were dating Kennedy didn’t see any of the negatives. Even the first few years of marriage went well. Then the complaining started. Karl always seemed to be getting the raw end of some deal. It usually involved a simple discussion at a party, or a double date with one of the tenured members of his department. To Kennedy the conversations seemed normal—two adults agreeing to disagree. But then they’d get home and Karl would go on for hours about how rude the other person was. How insulting the person had been and that he could tolerate a lot of things but ill-mannered adults was not one of them. Kennedy never saw it. She worked in the ultimate defend-your-position job. Day in and day out she had to take tough stances and was often told by her superiors that she was wrong. With so much going on there was no time to pout. Kennedy eventually began to see him as an incredibly insecure man who couldn’t bear the thought of being upstaged, at least intellectually. She reasoned that this was why he was teaching philosophy to freshman at American University. The job allowed him to play god to a bunch of kids who were just thrilled to be living away from their parents, and wouldn’t dare challenge a learned professor.

As she saw this ugly side of him, she instinctively withdrew, and he instinctively saw her retreat as a betrayal, and that was how they ended up in their current state of marital detente. So on Sunday mornings he ran, and she got some much-needed downtime. It also happened to be the only day she wasn’t expected to work, although if a crisis popped up it didn’t matter what day or time it was, she had to head in. None of this bothered Kennedy. Her job was interesting, challenging, frustrating, and ultimately crucial to the security of the country. What Sundays offered, as long as the enemy was cooperating, was a certain degree of solitude. It gave her the necessary time to filter through the thousands of data points she’d been dealing with during the week—all of the various operations and needs of her people and the operations that were being mounted against her country. She needed at least one day out of the week to step away from all of it and try to gain some perspective.

She was doing that on a subconscious level, while plowing through the Arts section of the Times, when the phone rang. Kennedy was irritated. It wasn’t yet 9:00 a.m., which for a Sunday morning was early. Kennedy considered not answering it, and then thought that it might be her mother. She set down her tea and walked to the kitchen where the phone was hanging from the wall. She looked at the small readout of the caller ID and her eyes narrowed. It was an international call. Kennedy had already checked the message service twice since getting out of bed and had spent a good portion of the morning wondering if Rapp had crawled into a Parisian sewer and died, which although she liked him would not be the worst possible outcome for her employer.

Calling her house directly was a major breach of protocol, but then again Rapp had proven that he wasn’t big on following her rules. Curiosity got the better of her and she reached for the handset. “Hello.”

“Good morning.”

There was no mistaking the voice on the other end. It was Rapp. Kennedy’s face flushed with resentment over his reckless ways. “You know this isn’t a secure line,” she said, not able to completely mask the annoyance in her voice. There was a frustrating sigh on the other end and then . . .

“Listen carefully.” His voice had a hard, I don’t give a shit edge to it. “As far as I’m concerned, there is no such thing as a secure line on your end.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You’re smart, figure it out.”

“I’m in no mood for your games,” she said in an attempt to assert control. “You’re in some hot water. There are some people who think you’ve screwed this thing up in the worst possible way, and since you haven’t bothered to check in, you’ve led them to speculate about how much you can be trusted.”

“I’m glad you fucking desk jockeys have it all figured out from four thousand miles away. I can just hear your uncle second-guessing every move I made even though he hasn’t a clue what went down.”

“Listen . . . this thing wouldn’t look any better from ten feet. It’s a mess and it’s your mess.”