American Assassin

Chapter 31
HURLEY explained to them that the process wasn't so much about finding the best option as it was eliminating the bad ones. That is, if you had the time to go through all the alternatives. After two days together, Hurley made the decision and they both agreed. Sunday night was the perfect time to make their move, and it would happen at the house. It was located thirty-five minutes outside of Hamburg, a nice wooded one-acre lot. Rapp was pretty sure Hurley had known from the get-go that this would be the appointed hour, but he wanted some push back. He wanted Rapp and Richards to tear into his plans and make sure there wasn't a better time to go after Dorfman. For two days that's pretty much all Rapp and Richards did.

For Rapp one of the more enlightening exchanges happened when he asked the salty Hurley, "What about the dogs?"

"Dogs," Hurley said with a devilish smile, "are a double-edged sword. Take this f*ck stick, for example." Hurley pointed to Dorfman's black-and-white photograph. Hurley had taken a black marker and drawn a Hitler mustache on him the night before. "He's an anal retentive Nazi prick if I've ever seen one. Wants complete order in his life, so he gets two poodles ... why?" He looked at Rapp and Richards.

"Because they don't shed," Richards answered.

"Exactly. Hans is a neat freak. Wants everything just so ... wakes up the same time Monday through Friday, and Saturdays and Sundays he allows himself one extra hour of sack time. He thinks he's too smart for the religion his parents raised him on, so on Sundays instead of going to church, he reads two or three newspapers, studies his Value Lines or whatever it is that a German banker studies, and he takes his dogs for a walk along the river and comes back and takes a nap. He has pot roast, mashed potatoes, and green beans for dinner, watches some crappy TV on the couch, and then lets the dogs out one last time at ten o'clock and then it's lights out."

Richards looked at the surveillance info. "How do you know all these details? I don't see any of it here."

Hurley smiled. "This isn't my first banker."

Rapp set that thought aside for a second and asked, "But what about the dogs?"

"Oh, yeah. The dogs. The dogs run the show. They need to be let out four times a day. Every morning at seven on the dot, a couple more times during the day, and then one more time before they turn in. What does he have to do every time before he lets them out?"

"Turn the alarm off," Rapp answered.

"You two see any alarms at the lake house?"

"No," Rapp answered.

"That's because they can make you lazy. You ever see me lock my hounds up?"

"No."

"What good does a dog do you if he's locked in his kennel?"

"If he's a guard dog, not much."

"That's right." Hurley looked at Rapp and said, "I bet I can guess your next question. You think we should take him while he's walking the dogs by the river?"

"The thought occurred to me."

"There's three reasons why I would prefer to avoid that option. The first is that it's harder to control things in a public setting. Not to say we couldn't do it. We might get lucky and have no witnesses like you did in Istanbul, but that can't be guaranteed. But two and three are why the park won't work. I need to talk to him and a public park is hardly the place for the kind of conversation we're going to have."

This came as a complete surprise to Rapp and Richards. Richards asked, "Why?"

"I'll explain it later."

"What's the third reason?" Rapp asked.

"We can't let anyone know he's dead before 9:00 A.M. Monday."

"Why?" Richards asked.

Rapp answered for him. "He'll tell us when we're done."

The Dorfman file was shredded and burned late Saturday night. By Sunday morning the ashes were cool enough that they could be scooped into a bag and thrown down the garbage chute. They spent two hours that afternoon sanitizing the condo. If they had to come back they could, but Hurley wanted to avoid doing so if possible. At eight in the evening they packed the last of the gear into the trunk of the rented four-door Mercedes sedan and left.

Rapp was the wheel man for the evening. Hurley and Richards were going in. It occurred to him that he was being punished for taking the initiative in Istanbul, but what could he say? Someone had to stay with the car. On the drive down the E22 Hurley went over the plan one last time. Every minute or so, he threw a question at Rapp or Richards asking them how they would react if this or that thing did not go as planned. Traffic was almost nonexistent, so they made it in just thirty minutes.

It was a dark, cold, windy night with temperatures expected to dip near freezing. They were all dressed in jeans and dark coats. Hurley and Richards also had black watch caps on their heads. The neighbor behind Dorfman was a widower with cats, but no dogs. The plan was to access his property from her backyard. At nine they did a final radio check and then at nine-fifteen Rapp turned the silver Mercedes onto the winding country road. The dome light was set to off. Rapp downshifted and coasted to a near stop several hundred feet from the widower's house. Richards and Hurley stepped from the slowly moving vehicle, carefully nudged their doors closed, and then disappeared into the trees. Rapp continued. A little less than a minute later he turned onto Dorfman's street and did a slow drive-by. The house was set back from the street about seventy-five feet. The front of the house was dark, but faint lights could be seen beyond what they knew was the living room and dining room.

Rapp pressed the transmit button on the secure Motorola radio, "All's clear up front."

Hurley and Richards found their way through the overgrown property of Dorfman's neighbor with relative ease. This was not Hurley's first trip, and he didn't feel the slightest bit guilty for not telling the new recruits. They did not need to know everything. He had personally put together the surveillance package on Dorfman eight months earlier. The stuff about the dogs he knew from many years of experience, and as far as bankers being anal retentive, it was a fairly accurate statement. The stuff about Dorfman having left the church that his parents raised him in and being a Nazi prick, he'd learned by keeping an eye on the man for close to two years.

To run an effective organization you need money. Hurley and Kennedy had been working overtime trying to map out how these various groups moved their money around the globe, and they had decided Dorfman was the key. In this, the ultimate asymmetric war, where they could not use even a fraction of the might of the United States military, they needed to get creative. If they couldn't openly bomb the terrorist training camps in the Bekaa Valley, then maybe there was another way to hurt them.

Hurley and Richards took up position near the back door at nine-thirty. If they had missed him somehow, Hurley was prepared to cut the phone line and break in. That option presented two problems, however. If he busted the door in, the security system would be tripped, and although an alarm would not be received at the monitoring station, the house's siren would begin to wail and would likely arouse the attention of one of the neighbors. Dorfman also owned a pistol, a shotgun, and a rifle. That Dorfman might react quickly enough to stop the intruders was unlikely, but Hurley didn't like unlikely.

The back light, above the kitchen door, was turned on at ten-oh-one. Hurley was crouched closest to the door on one knee and Richards was right behind him. From where he was positioned, Hurley could hear the chimes on the keypad as the digits were entered. The door opened, and the two standard poodles bounded out the door and onto the patio. Hurley had to trust Richards to do his job and stay focused on his. He sprang from his position and put his shoulder into the door before it could be closed. He hit it with enough force that it bounced back and hit an unsuspecting Dorfman in the face.

Over his shoulder he heard the dogs begin to growl. He grabbed the door by the edge and, looking through the glass, came face-to-face with a stunned Dorfman. The growling had turned to barking and Hurley resisted the urge to turn around to see how close they were to taking a bite out of his ass. Instead he pulled the door toward him and then smashed it into Dorfman's face. There was a scramble of nails and paws on the brick patio and then the welcome sound of compressed air forcing a projectile down a muzzle. One shot and then a second, each followed by short yelps and then some whimpering. Hurley saw the light switches to his left. There were three of them. He raked his silencer down the wall, knocking all three into the off position and relegating them to semidarkness. Quickly, he slid through the door, partially closed it, and stuffed the silencer into the shocked and open mouth of Dorfman.