Order to Kill

CHAPTER 21

ABOVE SOUTHWESTERN VIRGINIA

U.S.A.

“WE’RE on our final approach,” Rapp said into his headset. “Could you give us runway lights?”

No response. They were coming in between two heavily wooded mountains, the outlines of which were barely visible in glow of the moon. The colonel whose name Rapp still didn’t know had managed to scrounge up one of the Air Force’s Gulfstream IIIs but, ironically, pilots had been in short supply. That left Rapp and his rusty flying skills in the right seat.

“I repeat. We are on our-”

“I can’t find the fucking switch,” a familiar voice interrupted. “Hang on. I think it’s behind this bush. Yeah, I’ve got it.”

Two rows of lights appeared to the north, outlining a runway that had been used probably no more than ten times since the Cold War. The pilot banked toward it and steepened their descent.

“Some genius,” Rapp said into the mike hanging in front of his mouth.

“What, I’m an electrician, now?”

“We’ll be on the ground in two. Try not to touch anything else until then. I’d rather not put this thing into the trees.”

“No problemo, man.”

Rapp glanced back into the cabin. The luxurious seats he was used to in the CIA’s G550 were conspicuously absent, replaced with a few frame-and-canvas benches bolted to the rear bulkhead. Joe Maslick had piled some blankets and cushions next to the warhead and was sound asleep with his head propped against the nosecone.

“Mas! Get your ass up. We’re landing.”

The former Delta operator jerked awake.

“Is that thing secure? We don’t need it chasing us around in here when we touch down.”

“We’re good,” he grumbled. “But there are better things to wake up next to.”

Rapp faced forward again and watched the approaching lights. Surprisingly, Maslick’s comment made him think of Claudia Gould. He tried to shake it off by telling himself that any relationship between them was doomed, but her image wasn’t so easily dismissed.

His relationships had always been a study in extremes. Maybe Claudia was the right balance. But was it worth the inevitable pain? The responsibility? The constraints? And more than that, was it fair? Anna was dead. Hurley was dead. Scott was likely dying. The people closest to him didn’t do well and Claudia was responsible for more than just herself. She had a young daughter who needed her.

The wheels hit the ground and a set of headlights flashed to their eleven o’clock. Rapp pointed them out to the pilot before trading his headset for a phone and heading back into the cabin. Irene Kennedy’s private line rang a good five times before she picked up. When that happened it usually meant she was in the midst of the three hours a night she managed to sleep.

“Have you landed?”

“Just touched down,” he said, helping Maslick unstrap the warhead. “What’s the update on Scott?”

Rapp expected the long silence that always preceded reports of the death of a friend, but the news turned out to be slightly more upbeat.

“The calf was all soft-tissue damage and the shot that hit him in the shoulder shattered his collarbone but isn’t anything a metal plate can’t fix. The dislocation was worse than the bullet wound. The head injury was more serious than we initially thought. Beyond the concussion, he has some hairline skull fractures.”

“And the knife?”

“He just got out of a four-hour surgery and they think they’ve repaired the damage…” Her voice trailed off.

“But?”

“But the blood loss and heat stroke were extremely serious. The doctors have induced a coma and the expectation is that he’ll never regain consciousness. If he does, they don’t know if he’ll have brain damage.”

Rapp grabbed the nuke’s nosecone and began dragging it toward the door. “Where is he now?”

“On his way to Bethesda in the C-17 you evacuated him in. I’m sure you already know this, but I want to say it anyway. We’re bringing in the world’s top people. Everything that can be done will be done.”

“His mother’s still alive,” Rapp said. “That’s the only family he has. Did you tell her?”

“I haven’t. She’s in the early stages of dementia and I think it would be better if we didn’t contact her until we know more. Certainly not until he’s in an American hospital bed.”

“Or an American grave.”

“I don’t think there’s any point in considering that possibility right now.”

“What about the guy who’s responsible?”

“We have some shaky cell phone footage. He had facial wounds that obscured his features somewhat but our people were able to clean it up and get some solid stills. We have them out to intelligence agencies worldwide but so far no hits.”

Rapp jumped out of the plane and moved away. The night had turned cool but the humidity still hung in the air. He crossed the runway as the lights blinked off and walked into the damp brush at its edge. There was no wind. The only sound was an engine starting up a few hundred yards to the west.

“Tell your people to find him, Irene. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Now.”

“I understand what you’re feeling, Mitch. Believe me, I do. But we’re doing the best we can.” She paused for a moment. “In the meantime, I need you back in Pakistan. After what happened, the Pakistani army is tightening its procedures for moving the country’s arsenal, but there’s the danger that this wasn’t the only warhead targeted. In fact, the army pulling back could make the problem worse.”

“Terrorist groups trying to make a move before the window closes,” Rapp said.

“Exactly.”

“I’ll fly back as soon as I can.”

“Thank you. With both you and Scott gone, our operation there is starting to unravel. And on top of that, we need to return their device. The political pressure is getting heavy and we’re seeing action by the army that we don’t like. This could be the first sign of a coup by General Shirani.”

Rapp let out a long breath. Pakistan run by Shirani would be a disaster. The current president was a scumbag but at least he was a secular, Westward-leaning scumbag. Shirani was a wannabe fundamentalist dictator with an insatiable thirst for power and a deep hatred for the United States.

“We’ll work fast,” he said as an old pickup rolled to a stop next to the jet. “I’ll contact you if we find anything interesting.”

Rapp disconnected the call and walked back onto the tarmac in order to greet the man stepping out of the truck. Craig Bailer was a full three inches taller than Rapp, with thick, tattoo-covered arms extending from a T-shirt extolling the virtues of Pabst Blue Ribbon. His gaunt face was shadowed by three days of stubble and a baseball cap equally enthusiastic about PBR.

“How’s it going, Mitch? Been a while.”

Despite his outward appearance, Bailer held three PhDs-one in nuclear physics and two in fields Rapp couldn’t pronounce. Kennedy had snapped him up after he’d unexpectedly walked away from Lockheed Martin but he’d hated Langley, hated his job, and hated being cooped up in an office. Toward the end of his tenure at headquarters, Bailer had spent most of his time working in the motor pool. In fact, it was he who had tricked out Rapp’s Dodge with full armor, run-flats, nitrous, and bulletproof glass, among other things. The people in personnel were fairly certain he was the best-educated and best-paid auto mechanic in history.

When he inevitably quit, Kennedy had gone into crisis mode. It had been Rapp’s idea to move him into an abandoned Cold War missile facility in a remote corner of Virginia. If Bailer wouldn’t go to the mountain, they’d just move the mountain to him.

Despite the huge financial outlay, though, Bailer spent less time at the facility than he did in the local drunk tank. The Agency only brought him in when there was a job no one else could handle. And that’s just the way the gregarious redneck liked it. He had a legitimate machine shop about twenty miles away where he fabricated custom parts for spy satellites and hot rods.

“Good to see you,” Rapp said, extending a hand. “Sorry about the short notice.”

Behind them, Joe Maslick had the warhead balanced in the plane’s open hatch. “Where’s the transport?”

“Right here,” Bailer said, slapping the side of his truck. He jumped in and backed up to the plane before getting out again to rearrange a cooler and some shovels to make room.

“Roll it on in,” Bailer said.

“That’s a three-foot drop.”

“It’s not a bottle of nitro, Mas. Do you have any idea how many intricate reactions it takes to set one of these things off?”

“No.”

Bailer grinned. “Me neither. But I figure it’s got to be more than two.”

Rapp gave a subtle nod and Maslick rolled the weapon out the door. It hit the bed of the truck with an earsplitting clang, nearly bottoming out the shocks.

“Hop in the back, Mas. There’s not enough room for all three of us in the cab.

Maslick jumped in, his two-hundred-twenty-pound frame pushing the chassis the rest of the way down. “Anything in that cooler?”

“Would I leave you hanging?” Bailer said, sliding behind the wheel.

Rapp opened the passenger door and picked up a stick of dynamite lying in the seat. Bailer grabbed it and tossed it into the back. “I was doing a little fishing last weekend. So how’s the Charger?”

“Stereo sounds like shit,” Rapp said as they accelerated up the tarmac.

“Yeah, I had to take out the main speakers to make room for the Kevlar. They’ve got some thinner stuff now and I’ve got a great sound guy I work with. You should bring it by.”

Maslick banged on the top of the cab with a beer can and Bailer held a hand through his open window to take it. “You want one, Mitch?”

“No.”

He popped it open and took a healthy slug as the vehicle bounced across a grassy field. With the shocks already at their limit, the nuke was making quite a racket bouncing off the sides of the truck’s bed, but Rapp didn’t worry about it. If Craig Bailer said it wasn’t a problem, it wasn’t a problem.

They finally skidded to a stop in an unremarkable part of the field and Bailer pointed to the visor above the passenger seat. “Could you hit that garage door opener, Mitch?”

He did and a moment later they were descending on a massive elevator platform once used to move intercontinental ballistic missiles.

“So are you looking for anything special, man? Or do you just want to know if the Pakistanis can detonate the thing without blowing their dicks off?”

“Irene wants a rundown of the technology and power,” Rapp said.

“What about you?”

“Someone tried to steal it. I want to know who.”

“No problem. I’ll bring in some of the forensics guys I work with. Anything else?”

“No,” Rapp said, watching the gray concrete walls slip slowly by.

“You all right, man?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure? Because it’s a beautiful night and we have a cooler full of beer and a stolen A-bomb. It don’t get any better than that.”