The Survivor

CHAPTER 5

The Land Cruiser’s front wheels dropped into a muddy ditch, and Ahmed Taj heard the whine of the engine as his driver gunned the vehicle toward the low bank on the other side.

Taj didn’t bother to look outside. He’d grown up surrounded by such places, and little had changed over the years. Unmaintained dirt roads still threaded haphazardly through tent cities and mud brick huts. The clear sky was still obscured by smoke from cooking fires. The only anomaly was the absence of people. Normally, the area would be filled with children not yet bowed by their circumstances and adults trying desperately to find a way to fill their bellies. On this day, his security detail had coordinated with the local Islamic militias to clear his entry and exit routes.

The SUV he was in was painted white and emblazoned with the logo of one of the aid agencies active in the area, allowing for a certain amount of anonymity despite being the only vehicle on the street. He glanced upward through the moon roof and saw nothing. It was an illusion, though. The Americans were ever present, watching with satellites, drones, and co-opted security cameras. Their mastery of technology was their greatest strength. But their utter reliance on it was, ironically, their greatest weakness.

Areas like these had been slowly taken over by various radical groups with the help of Akhtar Durrani and his notorious S Wing.

The task of relocating these groups from the rural areas to the cities had been as critical as it was monumental. Here, mixed into the general population, even the most surgical drone strike would generate substantial collateral damage. The Americans were uncomfortable with civilian casualties and absolutely abhorred photographs of the blackened bodies of women and children.

It was all part of the bizarre web of lies and hidden agendas created by his country’s long relationship with the United States. Many of the politicians in Washington believed that the quagmire in Afghanistan had been caused by the U.S. abandoning the region after the Soviets fled. It was a naïve and arrogant view — an example of how the Americans saw the world as revolving entirely around their fleeting experiment with democracy. Afghanistan had simply reverted back to what it had been for a thousand years. An inevitable and easily predicted outcome.

The money originally earmarked for the mujahideen, though, continued to flow. In the last year alone, the United States had supplied almost $5 billion in aid to Pakistan, most of which had been quietly absorbed by the military and ISI. In fact, the army was now the — country’s largest holder of commercial real estate, owning condominium complexes, shopping malls, and office buildings throughout the world. Pakistan’s generals were some of the wealthiest men in the country.

While the situation was hopelessly complicated, its fundamentals were simple: Pakistan’s military-industrial complex and intelligence apparatus had become addicted to American dollars. The only real threat to that massive source of funding was the eradication of terrorism in the region. This left the ISI in the twisted but wildly profitable business of publicly fighting the terrorist threat to America while privately supporting it.

It was a situation that had to be handled with the utmost care. Enough fires had to be ignited to keep the Americans chasing after them, but no single fire could burn so brightly that it garnered too much attention. Unfortunately, that line had been recently crossed.

Durrani had pressed Afghan general Abdul Qayem to set up an — assassination attempt on Mitch Rapp. It had been a largely foolish enterprise, turning entirely on successfully killing a man who had proved countless times to be immune to such actions. Now Rapp was leaving no stone unturned in his search for Qayem, including pressing into service Abdul Zahir, who was as shrewd as he was loathsome.

Arrogance was a trap that had killed countless powerful men, and it was one that Taj had promised himself he would never fall into. Mitch Rapp was not someone to be trifled with. Only a fool would refuse to acknowledge that he usually got what he wanted. And what he wanted was to hunt down and butcher his enemies.

Local militia began appearing on the street — dirty men with Kalashnikovs and faces obscured by scarves. They watched his vehicle pass but made no move to block its progress. The Land Cruiser threaded through a narrow gap in a mud wall and stopped on the other side. Taj stepped out, looking down to hide his face from potential surveillance drones. The stone hovel was only a few meters away, and he covered the ground quickly, passing through a door that had been cobbled together from materials scrounged from a landfill.

Inside, the heat and stench of excrement condensed into a humid fog. The single room was empty and he crossed to the back of it, descending a set of rickety stairs to a basement carved from the earth. It was, in fact, one of the many entrances to an elaborate maze of fetid tunnels designed to obscure the movements of the insurgents inhabiting the area.

Near the base of the stairs was a lone man, naked except for a black canvas hood secured around his neck. His hands and feet were wired to the chair he was in and his head moved with birdlike jerks as he tried to track the movement his ears had picked up.

Taj stopped in front of the man, letting his gaze sweep from the stomach resting on thighs thick with hair, to a tray arranged with knives, pliers, and a single propane-fueled torch.

“Ahmed!”

Taj turned toward the figure of General Qayem as he emerged from a tunnel beneath the stairs.

“Abdul. It brings me joy to see you.”

They embraced, and when Taj pulled away he pointed to the naked man in the chair. “You found him.”

“He’s a clever little cockroach,” Qayem said. “He has many rocks to hide beneath, but his main tool is fear. Fortunately, some of his men are more afraid of me than they are of him.”

He pulled the hood off and Taj looked into the terrified eyes of Abdul Zahir. His hair and beard were shoe-polish black, contrasting the gray streaks of his body hair. It was the custom of Afghan men to try to look younger than they were in a country where age was often seen as a sign of weakness.

“Are you pleased?” Qayem asked.

It was hardly the right word. He was angry about Qayem’s attack on Rapp, but it was impossible to blame the man. He was an old and loyal friend who had only been following Akhtar Durrani’s orders. The great lengths the ISI went to in order to ensure unquestioning loyalty could at times have drawbacks. Qayem would have never even considered questioning the orders of the deputy general of ISI’s external wing.

“Please,” Zahir said through chapped, swollen lips but then seemed to lose his train of thought. “Please…”

“And what would you have me do for you?” Taj said. “You are a pig who believes in nothing. Who serves neither God nor his people. Who allies himself with whoever pays the most.”

“It’s not true!” he said, the lack of force in his voice suggesting that even he recognized the absurdity of the denial.

“You were never of any importance, Zahir. I would have been content for you to just die of old age, surrounded by the things your treachery allowed you to acquire. But then you allied yourself with Mitch Rapp.”

“Malik al-Mawt? No! That’s a lie!” Zahir said. Malik al-Mawt roughly translated to the angel of death, a moniker that the Afghans had given Rapp years ago.

“I believe you know him as Mr. Harry.”

Zahir’s eyes widened. “It can’t be. I… I didn’t know.”

Taj could tolerate liars, but there was nothing that disgusted him more than a coward. By all reports, Zahir had tried to insert himself into the investigation of Rickman’s kidnapping thinking it was being run by the CIA’s pathetic station chief, Darren Sickles. Instead of the bowing and scraping he’d become accustomed to, though, he’d found Rapp’s pistol pressed to his forehead. Ever since, the man had been tracking Qayem in hopes of saving his own pathetic life.

“I am deeply sorry about Rapp,” Qayem said. “It was my failure and my responsibility.”

“No, old friend. This was Durrani’s failure. And he’s paid for his incompetence.”

In fact, it was likely that Durrani had died at the end of Rapp’s infamous Glock. Taj had extensive audio surveillance set up at Durrani’s house, but cameras had been impractical. This left him with only a general description of Kassar’s accomplice in the killing of Durrani and Rickman. Digital recordings of the man’s voice had confirmed an American accent but they were of insufficient quality for comparative voice printing.

It was this uncertainty that had left him no choice but to tell Irene Kennedy far more than he’d wanted. There was no way to know what Kennedy had learned or what she suspected. He couldn’t afford to be caught in a lie. She was a clever bitch and he needed to build trust — between them — to blind her until it was too late.

“Please,” he heard Zahir say behind him. “You have to believe me. If I had known who he was, I would have never helped him. I would have—”

“Silence!” Taj screamed, spinning and running at the man. He snatched a meat cleaver from the tray and swung it down onto Zahir’s wrist where it was secured to the arm of the chair.

The hand remained wired where it was, but Zahir’s arm was suddenly free. He screamed like a woman as he drew back the stump, spraying blood across Taj’s white polo shirt.

The ISI director retreated out of range and Qayem snatched a piece of wood from the dirt floor, swinging it full force into the side of the wailing man’s head. Silence once again descended on the cramped underground chamber. Only Qayem’s elevated breathing and the sound of Zahir’s life leaking from him intruded.

“Rapp is coming for you, my friend,” Taj said. “I have a man inside his organization who I believe will be able to eliminate him, but our ability to communicate is limited. Once again, we find time working against us.”

Qayem was smart enough to understand that he would eventually be found and humble enough to know that he would eventually break. No one could resist what the CIA man would unleash.

“You know what has to be done,” Taj said.

“Yes.”

The dirt floor had been turned to mud by Zahir’s blood, increasing the humidity as Taj returned to the tray and picked up the traitor’s .40-caliber Smith & Wesson. A gift from the Americans.

He raised the weapon and pressed it against his old friend’s forehead.

God is great were the last words to pass Abdul Qayem’s lips.