Maslick had never wanted to be in charge of anything. When he’d joined Army Delta, he’d decided the way to live a happy life was to pick good leaders and do what they said. It’s why he’d followed Coleman into the private sector and spent most of his career backing up Mitch Rapp. They did the thinking, he did the shooting. It was the fucking natural order of things.
“Yup. He’s turning. Game on.”
Maslick checked his fuel gauge. An eighth of an inch past full, just like it had been five minutes ago. He’d become obsessed with blowing this operation over something stupid and having to tell Rapp that he’d forgotten to charge his phone, or run out of gas, or brought the wrong map. It had gotten so bad that it was starting to interfere with his ability to think straight.
“Did you get any pictures?” he asked.
“Of the car, but nothing decent of the people inside. Too much reflection off the glass.”
“Copy that,” Maslick said, trying to calm down. This was a simple job, which was why it was given to him. A few months ago Rapp had gotten his hands on a rising ISIS star from Crimea. Hayk Alghani had been a con artist his whole life, spending most of his time in and out of jail or on the run. After one of his banking scams had gone bad, he’d run to Sevastopol and holed up in a tenement run by local gangsters. The European authorities got wind of it, though, and in a panic he’d bought a copy of Islam for Dummies and hightailed it to Syria. His history of financial and Internet scams had made him an instant hit and he’d moved up quickly. Unfortunately for him, so quickly that he’d attracted the attention of the CIA.
Rapp had snatched him outside of Berlin and he’d cracked after the first face slap—giving up everything he’d ever done and pledging his undying loyalty to America. Now he was in a run-down apartment less than a mile from where Maslick was parked, waiting for one of ISIS’s top money couriers. A man known only as the Egyptian.
All Maslick had to do was stuff the Egyptian into his trunk and get him to an Agency black site in one piece. By all reports, the man always worked alone, was getting up there in years, and never carried a weapon. Ops didn’t get much easier than that.
Now, though, they were looking at a guy in an S-Class with what sounded like bodyguards. Pretty much the fucking opposite of easy.
Headlights appeared at the end of the empty street and began to approach. Maslick ducked down in the cramped seat, waiting for the vehicle to pass before rising again. Definitely a late-model S-Class. Even worse, it was riding a little too low on its shocks. Armor.
The brake lights came on and it eased left, disappearing from his line of sight.
“Wick,” Maslick said into his throat mike. “They’re coming your way.”
“Roger that. I’m in position.”
Wicker’s vantage point was from the top of a building across from the one where the meeting was scheduled to take place. While Wick was undoubtedly one of the best snipers on the planet, his job at this point was just to observe. The goal was to capture and interrogate this asshole, not to kill him.
Maslick waited, noting that his heart rate was higher than it normally would be during a firefight. He didn’t know shit about logistics, and while this op would have been a cakewalk for Coleman or Rapp, it had too many moving parts for him to keep track of. Instead of one target, there were three. Instead of a conventional vehicle, there was an armored Mercedes. Was it possible that these sons of bitches had backup? Maybe Wick wasn’t the only shooter on high ground right now in Rabat.
Maslick was starting to sweat so badly it was going to be hard to hold a gun, something that had never happened to him before. Not in Afghanistan. Not in Iraq. Not even in that disaster in Pakistan.
Reason number fifty he shouldn’t be running this op. Or was that fifty-one?
“The target’s stopped,” Wicker said. “One man getting out of the back. Doesn’t look Egyptian to me. Full Saudi getup—ten-thousand-dollar suit and a tablecloth on his head.”
Maslick swore under his breath.
“I didn’t copy that, Mas. Say again.”
“Did you get a picture?”
“Yeah. Not perfect, but probably good enough for the cover of Terrorist Prick magazine.”
Maslick slammed a hand against the steering wheel and then wiped at the sweat running down his forehead. Everything he’d been told by the analysts was now officially complete bullshit. This had just gone from a by-the-numbers rendition to an on-the-fly improvisation.
“Send it to Langley. See if we can get anything off facial recognition.”
CHAPTER 3
Al-Shirqat
Iraq
RAPP glanced at the glowing hands of his battered Timex watch and then behind him into the darkness. While he couldn’t see much, he could hear plenty. Dawn was bearing down on them and they were moving at half his worst-case pace with twice his worst-case noise. The plan was to be well into the open desert by sunrise. Clearly, that wasn’t going to happen. Time to come up with a plan B.
Gaffar slipped around a fallen column and Rapp followed his bulky outline as it approached.
“I told you to stay in the back and sweep,” he said when the Iraqi came alongside.
“I understand, but this isn’t going well, Mitch. Ali is struggling and Yusef says he twisted his ankle. It’s going to slow our progress further.”
That seemed impossible. There were people in nursing homes who could have made it to the edge of town by now.
“How far into the desert do we need to travel, Mitch?”
“About fifteen kilometers. It wasn’t hard for me to drop close to town, but bringing a chopper in is too risky. There are too many patrols.”
The rest of their people started trickling in after an excruciatingly long five minutes. The woman whose name he couldn’t remember was first, keeping a reasonable pace. Not surprising. If anyone was motivated to get the hell out of al-Shirqat, it would be her. The perfunctory decapitation or firing squad ISIS would use to deal with the rest of them was downright humane compared with what they did to women.
“Tell me your name again,” Rapp said quietly to her.
“Shada.”
“Where’s your husband, Shada?”
“Helping Yusef.”
It took four more minutes for the rest of them to gather. Yusef was limping badly with an arm looped over Mohammed’s shoulder for support. Rapp was accustomed to working with soldiers who would go to extraordinary—sometimes even counterproductive—lengths to hide fatigue and weakness. Yusef, in contrast, seemed to be milking it.
The temptation to grab him by the hair and have a serious heart-to-heart about their current situation was overwhelming, but it would just make things worse. These were young civilians who had spent the last few weeks living out in the elements and the last few years living in hell. They were running on fumes, and when those fumes were exhausted, they wouldn’t be able to switch over to determination or pride or loyalty to keep them going. They’d drop.
Rapp sank to one knee and motioned for the others to gather around him. “Change of plans. Trying to walk out of town and across fifteen kilometers of desert isn’t going to happen. We’re going to have to get a vehicle.”