American Assassin

Chapter 34
SOUTHERN GERMANY

THE trip was uneventful, in the sense that they pointed the hood of the big Mercedes south and stopped only twice before reaching the Swiss-German border. For eight hours they cruised at an average speed of 120 kilometers an hour down the smooth, twisting autobahn. Near some of the larger towns they had to slow, and when they neared the mountains to the south the winding, rising road slowed their progress only slightly. They were thankful that there was no snow.

They skirted Hannover, Kassel, Frankfurt, Strasbourg, and a blur of other towns, while Hurley pored over the treasure trove of information he'd retrieved from the banker's safe. Richards fired up the laptop and used the decoding software to uplink the information on Dorfman's disks via the satellite phone. Kennedy had a team assembled in D.C. who were translating and filtering the information. Richards was done sending the information by the time they reached Kassel. He slept for the next two hours. Rapp listened to the snippets of conversation coming from the backseat and wondered what the next move would be. Hurley liked to operate on a strictly need-to-know basis, and Rapp and Richards rarely needed to know, at least as far as Hurley was concerned.

Halfway through the trip, Hurley ordered Rapp to pull over and switch with Richards. They topped off the gas, used the men's room, and Hurley bought coffee and some snacks for him and Richards. Rapp didn't mind driving but Hurley was insistent. An hour or two of downtime was crucial. One never knew when things would get interesting. As was often the case, though, Hurley did not listen to his own advice and continued to work at a feverish pace. Rapp climbed into the backseat, and after a few minutes of silence he asked Hurley, "What are we doing?"

Uncharacteristically, Hurley laughed. "I'll explain before we cross the border. Right now I need to figure this shit out."

It occurred to Rapp that the man was punch-drunk, but he didn't dwell on it. Within minutes the hum of the tires rolling at high speed on the concrete surface of the autobahn sent Rapp into a trance. He rolled up his jacket, wedged it in between the door frame and his head, and fell asleep. For the next few hours he drifted in and out of sleep, the shrill ring of the satellite phone interrupting dreams of poodles, bad comb-over hairdos, and trussed-up, plump German women. At one point he was drifting off to sleep and wondered what Frau Dorfman would do with the dogs now that her husband was not of this world. For some reason that made him think of the expanding pool of blood under Dorfman's head. How far had it stretched? Would it begin to dry in the arid winter air? How much blood was actually in a human head? One pint? Before he could decide on an amount he drifted off.

Hurley never slowed. He reviewed every document, every file, Post-it note, and receipt. He'd filled close to an entire notepad with the most pertinent information. At 5:00 A.M., they stopped at a roadside motel outside Freiburg and got two connecting rooms, where they cleaned up and changed into suits and ties for the border crossing. Hurley ordered them to pack their weapons in the hidden compartments inside their suitcases. By six they were back on the road with fresh coffee and rolls. And Hurley was ready to explain what they were doing. Unfortunately, he chose the wrong military campaign to illustrate his point.

"You two familiar with Sherman's march to the sea?"

Rapp was behind the wheel. Having been raised in northern Virginia, he didn't really consider himself a southerner, but he was a proud Virginian, and that meant he knew his Civil War history. To a true southerner like Richards, who had been raised in Covington, Georgia, the mere mention of William Tecumseh Sherman was enough to start a fight.

"Total war," Hurley said. "Just like Sherman. If our enemy won't come out and meet us on the field of battle, we need to bring the war to their doorstep. We need to destroy their capacity to fight. We need to spook them into maneuvering in the open so we can crush them."

Rapp could see both men's faces in the rearview mirror. Hurley was oblivious to the revulsion on Richards's face.

"Are you trying to tell me," Richards said, "that we're Sherman?"

"I sure as hell hope so," said Hurley, in a state of near elation. "He won, didn't he?"

Rapp couldn't take it anymore and started laughing.

"What the hell's so funny?" Hurley asked.

When he got control of himself he said, "You're sitting next to one of Georgia's finest. It's like singing the praises of Andrew Jackson to a bunch of Indians."

"Oh," Hurley said as he realized his mistake. "No offense intended. We'll have to debate that one over beers one night. Sherman was a badass." Throwing him a bone, he added, "And Lee and Jackson were two battlefield geniuses. Can't deny that." Then he changed tactics and asked, "You've hunted birds, right?"

"Yeah."

"Why do you bring a dog into the field?"

"To get the birds up."

"Exactly," Hurley said. "These guys have done a damn good job keeping their heads down the past ten years while Langley's been focused on Central America and avoiding those dickheads up on Capitol Hill. I told you about our operative that got snatched off the streets of Beirut a few months back ... well, that's not the first time that's happened. We got soft in the eighties and let these a*sholes get away with way too much shit." Glancing at Rapp's face in the mirror, he said, "April of '83 our embassy gets hit ... sixty-three people killed. Langley lost eight of its best people that day, including our Near East director and station chief." Hurley left out the fact that he had been in the city that day. That he could have easily been one of the victims. He also left out the fact that Kennedy's dad was one of the men they'd lost. It was not his place to share something so personal. If she wanted to tell them one day, that was her business. "Our response ... we send in the Marines. October of '83 the Marines and French forces get hit by a couple of truck bombs. Two hundred and ninety-nine men wasted, because a bunch of f*cking diplomats conned the command element into thinking too much security would send the wrong message. Mind you, not a single one of those dilettante pricks ever spent a day in that godforsaken city. Our response after the barracks bombing ... we say we're not going to leave, we drop a few bombs, and we leave."

Hurley swore to himself. "And they get it in their heads that they can f*ck with us and get away scot-free. March of '84 they grab my old buddy Bill Buckley, our new station chief, Korean and Vietnam War vet. Amazing guy." Hurley looked out the window for a moment with sadness in his eyes. "They tortured him for almost a year and a half. Flew him over to Tehran. The bastards taped it. I've seen parts." Hurley shook his head as if trying to get rid of a bad thought. "They sucked every last drop of information out of him, and then they sold it to the Russians and anyone else who was interested. Bill knew a lot of shit. The info they got from him did a boatload of damage. I can't even begin to tell you how many nights I've lain awake wondering how I would have handled it. They brought in a so-called expert. A Hezbollah shrink by the name of Aziz al-Abub. Trained by the Russians at the People's Friendship University. The names these a*sholes come up with just boggles the mind. Al-Abub pumped him full of drugs and poked and prodded. The word is he had two assistants who helped him. They turned it into a real science project. Bill's heart eventually gave out, but not before they extracted some of our most closely held secrets.

"One by one assets started to disappear. Highly placed sources in governments around the region and beyond, and how did we react? We didn't do jack shit, and the result was they became more emboldened. Qaddafi, that quack, then decides to plant a bomb in a disco in Berlin, and finally we decide to hit back and drop a few bombs on his head. Unfortunately, we missed, and then in July of '88 that cowboy captain of the Vincennes decides he's going to start racing all over the Strait of Hormuz chasing ten-thousand-dollar fiberglass gunboats with a half-billion-dollar Aegis guided missile cruiser." Hurley had to stop and close his eyes as if he still couldn't believe that ugly piece of history.

Rapp finished it for him. "Iran Air Flight 655. Two hundred and ninety civilians."

"Yep," Hurley said, realizing that having lost his girlfriend later that same year, Rapp would know the story. "Not our proudest moment. I don't care what anyone tries to tell you, that one was our fault. Instead of owning up to it, and using it as an opportunity to show the Iranian people that we weren't out to get them, we denied the entire thing. Went so far as to blame it on them. Now, they weren't without fault, but that captain had two choppers on board to deal with those gunboats. The strength of the Aegis cruiser is distance. You don't close with the enemy to use your World War II - era guns. If there's really a threat, you back off and fire one of your missiles."

"And that's what led us to Pan Am Lockerbie," Rapp said.

Hurley nodded. "It's a little more complicated than that, but in a nutshell ... yeah."

"So," Richards said, "we fit in how?"

"Let's just say some people in Washington have seen the error of their ways. This terrorism, especially the Islamic radical shit, has some people spooked, and it should. They saw what happened last time when we allowed someone like Buckley to get snatched without lifting a finger. It gives people the wrong idea. Now the Schnoz has been grabbed, and it's starting all over again. I'm not supposed to tell you guys this, but what the f*ck ... five of our sources have been killed in just the last few months. We've had to recall another dozen-plus. We're flying blind. And once again, by doing nothing, we've reinforced the idea that they can do whatever they want to us, and we won't lift a finger."

"And the stuff you've been working on all night. How does that fit in?" Rapp asked.

"Let's suppose for a second that you have five million dollars sitting in a Swiss bank account. That money represents years of extortion, drug and gun running, counterfeiting, and a host of illegal scams. You've worked yourself to the bone squirreling away this money. What would you do, if you woke up one morning and found out that account, your account, was empty?"

Rapp looked at the winding road and said, "I'd flip."

"You think you might pick up the phone and start demanding some answers?"

"Yeah."

"Damn right you would. Right now these pricks are sleeping soundly in their beds, thinking their money is safe in Switzerland. At some point in the next twenty-four hours they're going to find out that their ill-gotten gains have vanished, and they are going to pick up the phone and they are going to go absolutely apeshit. And when they do" - Hurley pointed skyward - "we will be listening."