Rapp illuminated his watch again but turned it off after a few seconds. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot to look at, and it just magnified his mild claustrophobia. On the bright side, the fact that he’d never made arrangements for his burial wasn’t turning out to be a problem.
He actually laughed out loud at that before letting the silence descend again. Finally he laid his cheek against the ground and stared into the darkness. His hope was that his mind would latch onto all the things he’d accomplished. The people he’d saved. The country he’d strengthened. Instead it got mired down in his failures. The relationship with his brother that he’d let turn into a couple brief phone conversations around holidays and birthdays. A world he’d seen through the sights of a gun. His hopelessly brief stint as a husband and his recent hesitant steps at acting like a father.
It had been a hell of a ride, though.
*
When Rapp woke again, his confusion had deepened. The air supply was giving out. He lifted his head and a cascade of dirt and rock hit him in the face. Maybe the start of a collapse that would put him in the express lane to hell. He smiled weakly. It’d be good to see Stan Hurley again.
“Mitch!”
He ignored the voice, assuming it was just a figment of his oxygen-deprived imagination.
“Mitch!”
This time the voice was accompanied by a light that penetrated his eyelids and the rush of air. A massive hand grabbed the back of his head, protecting it from a cascade of dirt and rock.
“Mitch, it’s Joe! Say something, man!”
His throat was too caked with dust to get anything out, but he managed to grasp the man’s forearm in a weak grip.
“Wick! He’s alive! What’s the ETA on that fucking chopper?”
Rapp wasn’t able to make out the response.
Maslick withdrew his arm and hammered a shovel into the dirt next to Rapp’s shoulder. “You gotta stop doing this to yourself, man. You’re not as young as you used to be.”
EPILOGUE
Franschhoek
South Africa
THE bottom of the couch had been sliced through during the search of Claudia’s home, but it wouldn’t show. Rapp flipped it back upright and swore under his breath when he saw similar damage across the top. She was already looking to cut Joel Wilson’s balls off, and this wasn’t going to help. As much as he’d like to be there to hold him down, Wilson was continuing his extraordinarily meticulous efforts to clear Rapp’s name. The guy was a complete jackass, but he was competent as hell. His balls were going to have to stay attached for the time being.
Rapp gently lifted an overturned lamp and swore a little less cautiously when it snapped in half. Anna was immersed in the task of cleaning up her bedroom, well out of earshot. It wasn’t hard to pick up on the mood of her mother, and the kid was perceptive enough to lie low.
He picked up the pieces of the lamp and headed outside to toss it on the growing pile of unsalvageable items. His phone began to ring as he started back, and a quick glance confirmed that it was the heavily encrypted number that had gotten him into all this.
“Yes, sir,” he said, turning and walking toward the shade of the wall that surrounded the property.
“How are you doing?” President Alexander asked.
“Good. I think Mas got more beat up digging me out than I did getting buried.”
“I swear you have nine lives, Mitch.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, not mentioning that by his count he was already on eleven.
“Look, I wanted to personally give you an update on Iraq. The guys we sent to confirm your kills started taking fire and I pulled them out. They tagged the spot, though, and we dropped a bunker buster on it. If anyone survived the collapse, I can guarantee you they’re dead now.”
“Unless there was another exit.”
“Let’s just call it a win for now, okay, Mitch? All evidence suggests that you killed Halabi and most of the ISIS brass.”
Rapp wasn’t so sure. He’d been burned too many times to count on unconfirmed kills. Until someone scraped DNA from the shit stain that used to be Sayid Halabi, he’d reserve judgment.
“Yes, sir.”
There was a pause that felt too long for a man who had every second of his day mapped out ahead of time. “I wanted to apologize face-to-face, but Irene says she’s not sure when you’re coming back.”
“Apology, sir?”
“I didn’t want to turn my back on you, Mitch. Sure as hell not for the Saudis. You know how I feel about them.”
Rapp walked to his car and unlatched the trunk, pulling a large, garishly wrapped box from it. “You gave me fair warning, sir. I wasn’t under any illusions about how this was going to go down.”
“Still, when I say I owe you, I mean it. The meeting we had . . .”
Unwilling to talk about it even on an encrypted line, his voice faded. “Well, let’s just say it wasn’t my finest hour.”
“What meeting?”
“Thanks, Mitch. And not just from me. King Faisal also wants me to convey his gratitude.”
“So he’s going to thank me through back channels while he quietly throws me under a bus at home?”
“Oh, it’s worse than that. We’re going to call what happened in Iraq a joint operation. And I know how you like your anonymity, so we needed someone to give the credit to.”
“Nassar,” Rapp said, starting back for the house.
“He dies a hero and the king doesn’t have to admit that a traitor got that close to him. Now isn’t the time for him to look weak. You probably know that better than I do.”
“Another half-assed political accommodation stacked on top of a bunch of other half-assed political accommodations.”
“No one’s ever summarized my job more eloquently. Enjoy your time off, Mitch.”
The line disconnected and Rapp set a course for Anna’s room. It was still a complete disaster, and she was sitting on the bed, reading.
“How’s it going?”
“Done!” She waved a hand around at the hard work she imagined she’d completed.
“Looks good,” he said, stepping inside. “I got you something.”
“What is it?” she asked, looking over the book and eyeing the box under his arm.
“Why don’t you open it and find out?”
She bounded off the bed and tore into the box, shredding the paper and pulling out a squirt gun nearly half her height.
“It’s for those closet monsters.”
“Awesome! Can I fill it?”
“Sure. Doesn’t do much good unless it’s loaded.”
She darted into the bathroom and he heard a clank that sounded suspiciously like a toilet lid going up.”
“The sink, Anna. Use the sink.”
“Okay,” she said, sounding a little exasperated.
When she reappeared, she was struggling under the weight of her new weapon.
“You think he might be in there now?”
“It’s a she. And I don’t know.”
Rapp slunk to the side of the closet, pressing his back against the wall and giving her a silent countdown as she lined up on it.
He threw open the door, but before she could take down her target, a shout froze them both.
“STOP!”
What was it about mothers and their uncanny timing? Rapp’s own had been the same way. The second he and his brother had lit a fuse, tied something to the cat, or climbed onto the roof, she would magically appear.