Текст книги "American Assassin"

Автор книги: Vince Flynn

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

CHAPTER 2

RAPP looked through the bug-splattered windshield at the ball-buster he’d been warned about. Even from across the yard he could see the displeased look on the guy’s face. He had medium-length brown hair swept to the right and a full Tom Selleck mustache. He was in a pair of faded olive shorts that were a little on the small side and a white V-neck T-shirt. As the car came to a stop Rapp noted the faded black combat boots and white tube socks that were pulled all the way up to his knees. His skin was a leathery, dark brown and all of it, even his cheeks, seemed tightly wound with muscles and tendons. Rapp wondered about the eyes that were conveniently concealed behind a pair of sunglasses. He thought about his plan, and he figured he’d find out soon enough.

“How old is he?” Rapp asked.

“Not sure,” Kennedy said as she put the car in park. “He’s older than he looks, though, but I wouldn’t bring it up. He doesn’t like talking about his age.” She unbuckled her seatbelt. “Wait here for a moment.”

Kennedy exited the vehicle and walked casually across the gravel driveway. She was wearing black dress slacks and a white blouse. Due to the heat and the fact that they were more than a hundred miles from headquarters, she’d left her suit jacket in the backseat. A 9-mm Beretta pistol was on her right hip, more to avoid a tongue-lashing from the man she was about to face than from any real fear that she’d have to use it. She looked up at the man on the porch and brushed a loose strand of her auburn hair behind her ear. Stopping at the base of the porch steps she said, “Uncle Stan, you don’t look too excited to see me.”

Stan Hurley glanced down at Kennedy and felt a twinge of guilt. This little beauty could jerk his emotions around in ways very few could. He’d known Irene longer than she’d known herself. He’d watched her grow up, bought her Christmas presents from strange exotic places, and spent more holidays with the Kennedys than without them. And then a little less than a decade ago, all the joy had drained from their lives when a delivery van packed with over two thousand pounds of explosives pulled up to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. Sixty-three people perished, including Kennedy’s father. Hurley had been away screwing one of his sources and had narrowly dodged the bullet. The CIA had lost eight valuable people that April day and they had been playing catch-up ever since.

Hurley was well aware that he had almost no control over his temper, so it was his habit to keep things brief when he was upset and talking with someone he liked. He said simply, “Afternoon, Irene.”

Kennedy had been expecting and dreading this moment for some months. Normally Hurley would have greeted her with a warm hug and asked her how her mother was, but not this afternoon. She’d done an end around on him, and Stan Hurley did not like people going over his head for approval on something this serious. The chill in his mood was obvious, but still she pressed on, asking, “How are you feeling?”

Hurley ignored her question and pointedly asked, “Who’s in the car?”

“New recruit. Thomas told me he filled you in.” Kennedy was referring to their boss.

Hurley’s eyes were shielded by the polarized lenses of his aviators. His head slowly swiveled away from the car toward Kennedy. “Yes, he told me what you were up to,” he said with obvious disapproval.

Kennedy defensively folded her arms across her chest and said, “You don’t endorse my decision.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

“I don’t run a damn Boy Scout camp.”

“Never said you did, Stan,” Kennedy said in a biting tone.

“Then why the hell are you wasting my time sending me some titty-boy college puke who doesn’t know the difference between a gun and a rifle?”

The normally stoic Kennedy allowed a bit of irritation to show. She was well aware of the special hold she had over Hurley, and a look of disapproval on her part was far more potent than a direct attack.

Hurley looked down at her and could see she was unhappy with him. He didn’t like that one bit. It was the same with his own daughters. If one of his boys had so much as looked at him sideways he would have knocked him on his ass, but the girls had the ability to get past all his defenses. Get inside him and create doubt. Still, on this issue, he knew he was right, so he held his ground. “Don’t make this personal, Irene. I’ve been at this a long time, and I know what I’m doing. I don’t need you going over my head and then coming down here and dumpin’ some untested rookie in my lap.”

Kennedy stood sphinxlike, refusing to yield her position.

Hurley took a drag from his cigarette and said, “I think you should save us all the headache and get back in your car and take him back to wherever you found him.”

Kennedy was surprised by the genuine resentment she felt. She’d been working on this for more than a year. Her analysis and her instincts told her Rapp was just the man they were looking for, yet here she was being dismissed like some complete neophyte who had no understanding of what they were trying to accomplish. Kennedy slowly climbed the porch steps and squared off with Hurley.

The veteran backed up a bit, obviously uncomfortable with someone whom he wouldn’t dare lay a hand on entering his personal space. “I got a lot of work to take care of this afternoon, Irene, so the sooner you get back in the car, the better off we’ll all be.”

Kennedy squared her shoulders and in a tight voice asked, “Uncle Stan, have I ever disrespected you?”

“That’s not what this is—”

“It’s exactly what it’s about. What have I done to you that has caused you to hold me in such low regard?” She inched closer.

Hurley’s feet began to shuffle. His face twisted into a scowl. “You know I think the world of you.”

“Then why do you treat me as if I’m still a teenager?”

“I don’t think you’re incompetent.”

“You just think I should stick to analysis and leave the recruiting and training to you.”

He cleared his throat and said, “I think that’s a fair statement.”

Kennedy put her hands on her hips and stuck out her chin. “Do me a favor and take off your sunglasses.”

The request caught Hurley off guard. “Why?”

“Because I know your Achilles’ heel, and I want to see your womanizing eyes when I tell you what someone should have told you a long time ago.”

Hurley cracked a smile in an attempt to brush her off, but she told him again to take his glasses off. Hurley reluctantly did so.

“I respect you,” Kennedy said, “in fact I might trust you more with my life than anyone in this world. You are unquestionably the best man to whip these operatives into shape … but there’s one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re myopic.”

“Really?”

“Yep. I’m not sure you really understand the type of person we’re looking for.”

Hurley scoffed as if the idea was preposterous.

“That’s right, and you’re too stubborn to see it.”

“I suppose you think the Special Operations Group just showed up one day. Who do you think trained all those guys? Who do you think selected them? Who do you think turned them into the efficient, badass killing machines that they are?”

“You did, and you know that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about our third objective.”

Hurley frowned. She knew right where to hit him. He quietly wondered if Stansfield had put her up to this and said, “You think this shit’s easy? You want to take over running this little operation?”

Kennedy shook her head and smiled in amazement. “You know, for a tough guy, you’re awfully thin-skinned. You sound like one of those damn desk jockeys back at Langley who run their section as if they were some Third World dictator.”

She might as well have hit him in the gut with a two-by-four. Hurley stood there speechless.

“You’ve created a cult of personality,” Kennedy continued. “Every single recruit is you twenty to thirty years ago.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, if you’re talking about our first two objectives.” Kennedy held up one finger. “Training operatives with the skills to get down and dirty if they have to and,” she held up a second finger, “creating a highly mobile tactical assault team, but when it comes to the third,” she shook her head, “we’re still at the starting gate.”

Hurley didn’t like hearing this, but he was not some unaware idiot. He knew what he’d been tasked to do, and he was acutely aware that he had so far failed to make any progress on the most delicate of the three programs. Still, it wasn’t in him to cede the point so easily. “I can teach anyone how to kill. That’s easy. You point the weapon, you pull the trigger, and assuming you can aim … bam, a piece of lead enters the target’s body, hits a vital organ, and it’s done. If you’ve got big enough balls I can teach you to slide a knife through a guy’s armpit and pop his heart like a balloon. Fuck … I can show you a thousand ways to punch someone’s ticket. I can teach you battlefield techniques until I’m blue in the face…”

“But?” Kennedy asked prodding him in the direction she knew he was headed.

“Turning a man into what we’re looking for,” Hurley stopped and shook his head, “it just ain’t that easy.”

Kennedy sighed. This was the opening she was looking for. Touching Hurley’s arm she said, “I’m not saying it is, which is why you have to start trusting the rest of us to do our jobs. I have brought you a gift, Stan. You don’t realize it right now because you think a guy has to go through boot camp before he’s ready to have a run at your selection process, and normally I would agree with you, but this is different. You’re just going to have to let go of some of your control issues for a bit. What I have in that car is exactly what you’ve been looking for, Stan. No bad habits that’ll take you months to undo. None of that stiff military discipline that makes all these guys stand out like a sore thumb when we dump them into an urban setting.”

Hurley glanced at the car.

“He’s off the charts on all of our tests,” Kennedy added. “And he’s yours for the shaping.”

With a deep frown Hurley studied what little he could see of this raw lump of coal that Kennedy was about to dump in his lap.

“That is,” Kennedy said, “if you can swallow your pride and admit that the little girl you used to bounce on your knee is all grown up and just might be better at spotting talent than you.”

Checkmate, Hurley thought to himself. I’m stuck with this puke. At least for a few days until I can figure out how to make him quit. “Fine,” he said with a defeated tone. “But no special favors. He pulls his weight just like everyone else or he’s gone.”

“I don’t expect any favors, but” Kennedy said, pointing a finger at his face, “I am going to be very upset if I find out you singled him out and gave him some of your famous extra love and attention.”

Hurley digested her words and then gave her a curt nod. “Fine … I’ll do it your way, but trust me, if I so much as get a whiff of weakness—”

“I know … I know,” she said, robbing him of the final word. “You’ll make him wish he’d never met you.” Kennedy had pushed it as far as she was willing for the moment. Rapp would simply have to show the crotchety old bastard what she already knew. “I have to head over to the Farm to take care of something. I’ll be back for dinner.” She turned to head back to the car and over her shoulder she yelled, “And he’d better look no worse for the wear than the other six, or you’re going to have one very unhappy niece on your hands.”

CHAPTER 3

RAPP watched Kennedy drive away, his heavy, oversized lacrosse duffel bag hanging at his side. The scene was a bit surreal. It brought back memories of being dropped off at summer camp when he was nine and watching his mom drive off. Just like today, he had gone of his own free will, but this time there were no tears in his eyes. Back then he’d been a boy afraid of the unknown. Today he was a twenty-three-year-old man ready to take on the world.

As the car drove down the lane, Rapp could feel the weight of his decision. A door was closing. He had picked one path over another and this one was undoubtedly the one less traveled. It was overgrown and more treacherous than his imagination could do justice to, but then again his youthful self felt invincible and was filled with schemes to cheat death. He would undoubtedly be pushed to quit, but he was confident that would not happen. He’d never quit anything in his life, and he’d never wanted anything anywhere near as bad as he wanted this. Rapp knew the score. He knew how his chain would be yanked and jerked every which way and he would be forced to endure all of it. The prize at the end was what it was all about, though, and he was willing to endure all of it for his chance.

Rapp could feel the man’s eyes on him. He let his heavy bag fall to the ground and watched him come closer. The man with the ‘stache and the sunglasses blocked his view of the long driveway. Rapp instantly smelled the acid mix of coffee and cigarettes on his breath. He wanted to take a step back, but didn’t want to appear to be backing down, so he stayed put and breathed through his mouth.

“Take a good look at that car,” Hurley said sourly.

Rapp tilted his head to the side and watched the sedan disappear around the corner.

“She ain’t coming back,” Hurley added in a taunting voice.

Rapp nodded in agreement.

“Eyes front and center,” Hurley snapped.

Rapp stared at his own reflection in the polarized lenses and remained silent.

“I don’t know what kind of fucking bullshit you pulled on her. I don’t know how you managed to con her into thinking you had what it takes to make it through my selection process, but I can promise you that every day you’re here, you will curse her a thousand times for walking into your life. But you better do it silently, because if I hear you utter one single unkind word about her, I will make you feel pain you never thought possible. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Yes!” Hurley barked. “Do I look like one of your faggot college professors?”

“No,” Rapp said without twitching.

“No,” Hurley howled with a veiny throat. “You call me sir when you talk to me, or I’ll stick my boot so far up your ass you’ll be chewing leather.”

A fleck of spit hit Rapp in the face, but he ignored it. He’d figured something like this would happen. He’d already taken a look around and hadn’t seen any others, so this was probably his best chance. “Sir, permission to speak?”

“I should have figured,” Hurley said with a sigh. He placed his hands on his hips and said, “All right, Ivy League. I’ll give you this one chance to say your piece. I can only pray you’re going to tell me this was a bad idea and you’d like to go home. And I’ve got no problem with that,” he added quickly. “Hell, I’ll drive you myself.”

Rapp grinned and shook his head.

“Shiiiiit!” Hurley drew out the word as he shook his head in disgust. “You actually think you can do this?”

“I do, sir.”

“So you’re really going to waste my time.”

“It appears so, sir. Although, if I may … I suggest we speed things up a bit.”

“Speed things up?” Hurley asked.

“Yes, sir. My guess is once you step in the ring with a man you can probably figure out inside about twenty seconds if a guy has enough talent to make it through your selection process.”

Hurley nodded. “That’s right.”

“I don’t want to waste your time, so I say we find out if I have the goods.”

Hurley smiled for the first time. “You want to take a run at me?”

“Yes, sir … so we can speed things up.”

Hurley laughed. “You think you can take me?”

“From what I’ve heard … not a chance in hell.”

“Then why are in you such a hurry to get your ass kicked?”

“I figure you’ll do it sooner or later. I’d rather do it sooner.”

“And why’s that?”

“So we can get on with the important stuff.”

“And what would that be?”

“Like you teaching me how to kill terrorists.”

This was a first. Hurley took a step back and studied the new recruit. He was six-one and looked to be in perfect shape, but at twenty-three that was expected. He had thick, jet-black hair and dark bronzed skin. He had the right look. Hurley sensed the first glimmer of what Kennedy had alluded to. More amused than worried, Hurley nodded his consent and said, “All right. We’ll have a go at it. You see that barn over there?”

Rapp nodded.

“There’s an open cot in there. It’s yours for as long as you can last. Throw your crap in the footlocker and put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. If you’re not ready and standing in the middle of the mat in two minutes I’m sending you home.”

Rapp took it as an order. He grabbed his bag and took off at a trot for the barn. Hurley watched him duck inside, noted the time on his digital watch, and walked back to the porch where he set down his coffee mug on the edge of the glossy white floorboards. Without so much as glancing over his shoulder he unzipped his pants and began to urinate on the bushes.

CHAPTER 4

RAPP found the cot next to three bunk beds. It was standard military surplus. Not great, but a hell of a lot better than the floor. After stripping to his underwear, he opened his bag and pulled out a pair of shorts and a plain white T-shirt. Kennedy had told him to pack only generic clothing. She didn’t want him wearing anything that could give one of the other men an idea where he came from. They were all under strict orders to not discuss each other’s past. Rapp folded up his clothes, placed them in the footlocker, closed it, and set the bag on top. He would have unpacked the bag, but he heard his instructor approaching. Rapp took up his position in the middle of the well-worn wrestling mat and waited eagerly for his shot.

Hurley stopped near the entrance to the barn, took a long drag off his cigarette, and began to loosen up with a few side stretches and shoulder rolls. He was not expecting much of a fight, so after a quick calf stretch he took one last puff off his cigarette, stubbed it out against the sole of his boot, and entered the barn. The new recruit was standing in the middle of the mat wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Hurley gave him the once-over. He was fit, just like all the others, but there was a certain casual, relaxed posture that he found offputting.

“Shoulders back! Eyes front and center!” Hurley shook his head and mumbled some incoherent words to himself. “I don’t have time to babysit.” He bent over and took off his boots and socks and set them neatly at a ninety-degree angle at the edge of the mat, socks folded on top. He took off his sunglasses and set them on top of the socks. Stepping onto the mat, he asked, “Rules?”

Rapp didn’t flinch. “That’s up to you, sir.”

Hurley bent back, continuing his stretching, and said, “Since no one’s here to monitor this little ass kickin’ I suggest we keep it civilized. Stay away from the balls and the eyes, and no throat strikes.”

“Choke holds?”

“Absolutely,” Hurley grinned. “If you want it to end all you have to do is tap out.”

Rapp shook his head.

“Fair enough.” Hurley caught his first glimmer of something he didn’t like. There was no sign of tension on the kid’s face. He looked as relaxed as a schmuck who was about to play a round of golf. Two possibilities presented themselves and Hurley liked neither. The first was that the recruit might not be the little mama’s boy that he thought, and the second was that he might be too stupid to know he wasn’t cut out for this line of work. Either way, he might have to waste more than one day of his valuable time trying to drum him out. Hurley was shaking his head and muttering to himself when he realized there was a third possibility—that the kid actually might have the goods.

The potential hazard made Hurley pause. He glanced at the young college kid and realized he knew surprisingly little about the man standing in the middle of the mat. The jacket he’d received from Stansfield was so sanitized that the pertinent details would have fit onto one page. Beyond the general physical description and test scores, every other piece of information had been redacted. The man was a blank slate. Hurley had no sense of his physical abilities and general bearing. He didn’t even know if he was left– or right-handed. A frown creased Hurley’s well-lined brow as he ran through some more scenarios.

Normally, when Hurley stepped onto the mat with a recruit, he already had the advantage of having read an extensive personnel file, as well as having watched them for several days. You could tell a lot about a man by observing him for a few days. He silently called himself a dumb-ass for not thinking of this sooner. There was no calling it off at this point. His bare feet were on the mat. If he called it off it would be a sign of weakness.

Hurley set his apprehension aside and reminded himself that he’d bested every man he’d run through here. He moved forward with his normal swagger and a lopsided grin on his face. He stopped ten feet away and said, “Ready when you are.”

Rapp nodded, dropped into a crouch, and made a slow move to his left.

Hurley began sliding to his right, looking for an angle of attack. He glimpsed his opening when his opponent made an aggressive head fake that was an obvious tell of what would follow. In that moment, Hurley decided to dispatch the kid quickly. He wasn’t going to waste time with defensive blocks and holds. He was going to make this kid feel some real pain. Maybe bust a couple of his ribs. That way, even if he proved to be a stubborn fool, there’d be no hope of his keeping up with the others.

Hurley anticipated the punch, ducked into a crouch, and came in to deliver a blow to the kid’s midsection. Right about the time he pivoted off his back foot and let loose his strike he realized something wasn’t right. The kid was a lot faster than he had anticipated. The little shit had doubled back on his own weak fake and was now a good two feet to the right of where Hurley had thought he would be. It looked like he had been suckered. Hurley knew he was horribly out of position, and exposed, but he wasn’t the least bit alarmed. He pulled back his punch and prepared to go back in again on a different angle of attack. He was in the process of delivering his second blow when he realized again that something was wrong. Hurley sensed more than saw the big left hook bearing down on his face. In the final split second before impact he braced himself by pulling in his chin and dropping his hips. The crushing blow landed just above Hurley’s right eye.

Punches are funny things in that each one is different. You’ve got uppercuts, hooks, jabs, roundhouses, haymakers, and rabbit punches, to name a few. If you’ve sparred enough, you’ve felt all of them, and you learn to recognize each one by feel almost the instant it lands. A little scorecard in your head quickly analyzes the blow, and there’s a brief conversation that takes place between the part of the brain that analyzes the thousands of instantaneous signals that come flying in and the part of the brain whose job it is to make sure the brain stays online. Hurley had been doing this for years, and as a man whose job it was to judge talent and teach, he had grown very accustomed to giving instant feedback to the man whose ass he was kicking. On this occasion, however, he was too busy trying to stay on his feet, so he kept his mouth shut.

The punch hit him so squarely that Hurley actually went down to one knee for a split second. The turtle move had saved him from getting KOed. If his head had been exposed any further the force of the blow would have snapped his jaw around so quickly his equilibrium would have gone offline, and he’d be down for a nice long nap. The ringside announcer in Hurley’s brain made him aware of two things in extremely quick succession. The first was that he hadn’t been hit this hard in a long time, the second was that he’d better launch a counterattack, and do it quickly, or he was going to get his ass kicked.

Hurley pivoted from his back to his front foot and launched a flurry of combinations designed more to get this kid to back up than actually hit him. The first two were blocked and the next five found nothing more than air. Hurley realized the kid must have been a boxer and that meant he’d have to get him down on the mat and twist him into submission. No more punches. Before Hurley had a chance to regroup, he felt the leg sweep catch him perfectly in the ankle of his right foot, which happened to be bearing about 90 percent of his weight. What happened next was simple physics. The sweep took him out so cleanly that there was no hope of catching himself with his back leg, so Hurley went with it. He landed on his ass, tucked and rolled back and sprang onto his feet. The fact that the kid had just swept him was not lost on Hurley. Boxers did not know how to use leg sweeps. There was a split-second pause while Hurley looked across the mat at the new recruit and wondered if he’d been lied to about his lack of military training. The respite did not last long.

Once again Hurley found himself on the receiving end of a combination of well-placed punches. He had to get this kid down on the mat, or he really was going to get his ass kicked. He backed up quickly as if retreating for his life. The kid followed him, and when he launched his next attack Hurley dropped down and slid in. He grabbed the lead leg and stuck his shoulder into the kid’s groin, while pulling and lifting at the same time. The kid tried to drop his hips but Hurley had too good a hold. Hurley was about to topple him when a double-fisted hammer strike landed between his shoulder blades. The blow was so solid Hurley nearly let go, but something told him if he did, he would lose, so he hung on for dear life and finally toppled the kid.

Hurley was on top of him. He found a wrist and jammed his thumb into the pressure point while maneuvering the rest of his body into position for an arm bar. He rolled off and delivered a scissor kick to the throat of his opponent that under the rules was not exactly fair, but neither was their business. The kick barely missed, but Hurley had his opponent’s wrist in both hands now and was ready to lean back and cantilever the kid’s damn arm until he hyperextended the elbow. Before he could lock in the move, though, the kid did something that Hurley did not think possible.

Rapp had somehow reversed into the hold and was now on top of Hurley, who still had a good grip on his wrist. Hurley’s head, however, was now firmly locked between Rapp’s knees. Rapp hooked his ankles together and began to close his knees like a vise crushing a coconut.

Hurley jabbed his thumb as deeply into the wrist of his opponent as he could, but it didn’t get him to back off a bit. He could feel the early stages of a blackout coming on and scrambled for a way out. He released his left hand from the wrist hold and grabbed a handful of the kid’s thick black hair. Instead of letting go, though, the kid squeezed his knees even harder. White lights were dancing at the periphery of his vision. Hurley couldn’t believe he just had his ass handed to him by some college puke.

Still, he did not stop looking for a way out, and with the darkness closing in, he found his answer sitting only a few inches in front of his face. He vaguely remembered a brief discussion about rules before they had started but that wasn’t important right now. Making sure he didn’t lose was what was important. In a last-ditch effort to avoid calamity, Hurley released his opponent’s wrist and lashed out with his now free hand. He found the kid’s gonads and with every last ounce of strength he clamped down and began to squeeze.