“Copy.”
Maslick would have preferred to take the courier during his meeting with Alghani, but there were too many uncontrollable factors. The apartment building had no fewer than thirty residents packed into it, including nine women and twelve kids. Worse, the souk where it was located was too narrow for a vehicle. That would have forced them to go in on foot and then drag their target back to the car. While it was true that there wasn’t much activity on the street at this hour, it was also true that Murphy’s Law ruled the business he’d chosen.
The plan they’d landed on was pretty simple, which was the only kind worth dealing with as far as he was concerned. There was just one way out for the courier—a road that was barely wide enough for a single car. Maslick would pull out in front of the Mercedes and Bruno McGraw would come in from behind. When they were directly beneath Wick’s rooftop position, they’d box the target vehicle in, snatch this son of a bitch, and be gone. The whole thing had been slated to take less than a minute and with a little luck would go completely unnoticed.
But now that elegant little plan had been blown to shit. Instead of a scrawny middle-aged Egyptian in a tin can of a car, he was dealing with three men—two undoubtedly armed—barricaded in an armored vehicle.
“Mas, you’re a go,” Wicker said over his earpiece.
He started the vehicle and moved out into the dark road. A man with a wheeled cart was coming in his direction, apparently getting an early start on setting up for the morning’s shoppers. Maslick eased to the right of the vendor, grinding off part of his side-view mirror on one of the buildings crowding the asphalt. Fuck it. It was a rental.
“Okay, Mas. You’re about a hundred yards ahead, paralleling them. Maintain your speed after the turn and you should be good.”
He stayed on course for another twenty-five yards and then took a left, keeping the vehicle at a leisurely fifteen miles an hour as he closed on a T in the road.
“You’re good. He’s still fifty yards out. Bruno’s coming up behind him.”
“Roger that.” Maslick turned right and was immediately dazzled by the glare of headlights in his rearview mirror.
With the new reality on the ground, there was no way they were going to be able to quietly box in their target. Instead, Maslick was going to have to slam on his brakes and let the Mercedes ram him from behind. It wouldn’t be enough to injure anyone inside, but the airbag deployment would slow down any reaction and Wick had ammunition that would penetrate the windshield. That would leave the man in back undefended, but accessing him was still going to be a noisy and potentially time-consuming trick.
So, while they could still achieve their objective of getting the -courier—though apparently the wrong one—they were going to leave two smashed cars and two dead men instead of the brief disturbance he’d planned on. Not ideal, but also not enough to call it off. It wasn’t like Rapp hadn’t broken a few dishes on these kinds of ops in the past.
“Mas, do you copy?” Wick again.
“Yeah. Go ahead.”
“We got a hit on that picture I sent to Langley. Seventy-nine percent probability that the guy in the back of that car is His Royal Shithead, Prince Talal bin Musaid of Saudi Arabia.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Nope.”
Maslick started to sweat again despite the cool air flowing through the window. The target was only twenty yards behind him now, approaching fast. Time was running out. In less than an eighth of a mile, the constricted corridor would open up and the powerful Mercedes would go by him like he was stopped in the road.
So now they weren’t just talking about a messy snatch-and-grab, they were talking about a messy snatch-and-grab of a Saudi royal. Bad, but still not a disaster. There were about a thousand of these anonymous princes roaming the world, so he wasn’t going to get his panties too bunched up about it. His job was to deliver the ISIS moneyman. What Rapp and Irene Kennedy did with him was their business.
They were right on his tail now and he could see the outline of the two men in the front seat of the Mercedes. Maslick suddenly realized that it was possible—probable, really—that they were just guards employed by the Saudi embassy to cart around visiting VIPs. Not terrorists. Not criminals. Just a couple former soldiers making a living.
“Mas, we’ve got some more intel coming in. Bin Musaid’s thirty-nine. Wife and two kids who live in Riyadh, but he seems to get around—the U.S., Canada, Europe. He’s worked for the Saudi government in the past, but not for a few years. No known job right now.”
Mas was feeling increasingly uncertain. “That seems like a lot of detail for us to have on some random prince.”
“That’s probably because he’s not some random prince. He’s King Faisal’s nephew.”
“What? Repeat that.”
“I said the Agency probably has all this intel because he’s King Faisal’s nephew. His dead sister’s son, it looks like.”
Fuck!
In his rearview mirror, he could see Bruno McGraw taking up a position thirty feet behind the Mercedes. Maslick was having trouble focusing on the image, though. It was being pushed from his mind by the thought that he was about to kill two innocent embassy workers and grab the nephew of the king of one of America’s primary allies in the Middle East. This had just gone from dealing with some bitching from the Moroccans to a major international incident with two counts of murder thrown in for good measure. Then, of course, there would be the official protests to the UN. The American politicians making grandstanding speeches about the out-of-control CIA. The calls for Irene Kennedy’s resignation. And him standing right in the middle of all of it.
“Mas,” Bruno McGraw said over his earpiece. “What are we doing? You’re coming up to the end of the road.”
Maslick reached for the phone on his dashboard, but there was no time to get authorization. His foot hovered over the brake for a moment then shoved down on the accelerator instead.
“Abort. I repeat, abort. Wick, go get the money from that apartment. Bruno, peel off east. We’ll rendezvous at the airstrip in two.”
CHAPTER 7
Outside of Washington, D.C.
U.S.A.
THE CIA’s Gulfstream G550 was on its final approach, heading into the setting sun as it descended toward the treetops. Rapp was stretched out on the sofa with his phone pressed to his ear.
“When you say ‘ready,’ Mitch, what exactly do you mean?”
“I mean that my car is parked next to the fucking airstrip like you promised.”
This landing site was Rapp’s go-to when flying into the D.C. area. Quiet and out of the way, but still less than an hour from his house.
“Yeah . . . about that,” Craig Bailer responded nervously. “Gunter isn’t done with the subwoofer.”