“Who’s Gunter?”
“The Swiss dude making your sub. Look, Mitch. The guy’s an artist and you can’t rush artists. Trust me, man. It’s gonna to be worth the wait. Not only are you finally going to have a kick-ass stereo, but I’ve also knocked forty kilos off the Kevlar without any effect on integrity. Plus, you’re going to have built-in encrypted phone and Internet.”
“How’s that going to help me on my forty-mile walk home?”
“I told Claudia it wouldn’t be done. Are you two—”
Rapp disconnected the call.
His efforts to get his life together had been just successful enough to remind him that having a life was a monumental pain in the ass. After his wife had been killed he’d jettisoned almost everything—-family, friends, possessions. And while the existence that remained had been admittedly empty, it had also been wonderfully simple. A sparse one-bedroom apartment, a flawless backup team, and work. The lack of extraneous moving parts kept everything rolling along with a satisfying precision.
Rapp sat up and looked out the window. The deserted airfield was a powerful reminder of the fact that the simplicity he’d become so comfortably numb to was gone. Cheerfully and thoroughly shredded by Claudia Gould.
Her husband had been one of the top private contractors in the world until Stan Hurley ripped his throat out. Rapp had set Claudia and her daughter up with clean identities and a new life in South Africa, but it hadn’t lasted. The Russians tracked them down and forced him to pull them out. In return for helping finish the construction of his new house, he’d let the two of them move in. It was a temporary accommodation that was turning out to be not so temporary.
So now he and Claudia had settled into an uncomfortably platonic cohabitation that was starting to feel like a low-grade Cold War. He was always able to find an excuse not to send them back to Cape Town, but couldn’t seem to dig up the courage to commit. Even after so many years, the death of his wife was a raw, bleeding wound. The years had proved that there wasn’t much that could kill him. Living through another loss like that, though, might.
Which brought him back to the empty airfield. Was Claudia making some kind of statement by not being there? Was she telling him that he needed to either make a move or walk away? It would be a fair point, though out of character. Her style was to have it out face-to-face. And why not? She was a deadly opponent in those kinds of con-frontations.
The wheels touched down and Rapp went forward, grabbing his duffle and opening the door. He jumped out and immediately turned away from the cockpit. The pilots hadn’t seen his face and he preferred to keep it that way.
The Gulfstream immediately took to the air again, leaving him standing among the lengthening shadows. His cell was in his pocket but he didn’t want to use it. Had he completely missed the fact that his relationship with Claudia had deteriorated to the point that she’d leave him there? Or was she just forcing him to sit and think about his situation for a while? Either way, she was justified. He was blowing it.
A vehicle appeared in the distance, but it wasn’t Claudia’s Audi Q5. Rapp’s hand moved closer to the Glock beneath his jacket but then fell to his side when he recognized the SUV belonging to Scott Coleman. It rolled to a stop and Rapp tossed his duffel inside before slipping into the passenger seat.
“How’d it go?” Coleman asked.
“Everyone got out.”
“Did you pass along my job offer to Gaffar?”
Rapp shook his head. “Turns out he was an artist before he was a soldier. He wants to learn English and go to work for an advertising agency.”
“No shit . . .”
Rapp watched the deliberate movement of Coleman’s arm as he put the vehicle in gear. The injuries the former SEAL had suffered in Pakistan were far worse than Rapp’s own. It was a minor miracle that he was alive and a major one that he could walk. He was working on his rehab full-time, but the slow progress had left yet another glitch in Rapp’s well-oiled machine. Coleman’s outfit, SEAL Demolition and Salvage, had been his primary backup for years. With its founder out of commission, they had been forced to put a reluctant Joe Maslick in charge. And while Mas was a hell of an operator, he was no Scott Coleman.
“Where’s Claudia?” Rapp said. There was no point in hiding from the subject.
“Apparently there’s a sleepover at your house tonight and she has her hands full.”
He was surprised at the relief he felt. She hadn’t been expecting to have to pick him up and it was entirely plausible that Anna had friends over. Maybe this wasn’t her drawing a line in the sand.
“So why are you here?”
“Somebody had to come and get your ass.”
That story sounded a bit thin. Sitting for extended periods of time was hard for him and he had people he could have sent. There was more to this and it wasn’t hard to guess what it was.
“What happened in Rabat?” Rapp said.
Coleman didn’t immediately answer, instead accelerating up the road. “There was a problem.”
“Are any of our guys hurt?”
“Nah. They’re all fine.”
“And the Egyptian?”
“There was no Egyptian, Mitch. Our intel was bad. The courier was a Saudi prince.”
“Do we have him?”
“So, the thing is—”
“Do we have him?”
“No.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“He was traveling in an armored vehicle and there were two guards with—”
“You’re telling me that Mas, Bruno, and Wick can’t handle two guards and a little armor?”
“What I’m telling you is that the prince in question is Faisal’s nephew.”
“I don’t give a shit who he is. I told—”
“Mitch, please! Let me finish. We threw Mas headlong into this and told him it was a nobody ISIS courier. He didn’t feel like he had the authority to make the call and there wasn’t time to get to Irene.”
“So he just walked away?”
“In a nutshell, yeah.”
Rapp tried to control his anger. The Saudis had gotten pass after pass. They were an antidemocratic monarchy, the world’s largest supporter of terrorist organizations, and funded the countless madrassas that churned out an endless stream of radicals to replace the ones he killed. And now King Faisal’s worthless nephew was rolling around Morocco with a briefcase full of cash earmarked for ISIS?
“Do we have proof?”
“That it was bin Musaid? Not ironclad, but we have a pretty decent photo taken through Wick’s scope.”
“Where is he now?”
“He hasn’t popped back up on our radar yet. We’re watching—”
“I mean Maslick.”