Consent To Kill

Chapter 32-33
32

ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY, MARYLAND

Mitch Rapp ran along the gravel shoulder, pounding out each step. His mood was anything but upbeat. There was a day not long ago when he flew down this road at a clip that would have left all but a few of the world's best athletes gasping for breath and falling to their knees. Even so, Rapp was a realist. He knew it was impossible to maintain the peak performance he'd had in his twenties and early thirties, but that didn't mean he had to like the aging process. He'd dealt with pain his entire life. He knew how to taunt it, suppress it, or just laugh it off. In fact, pain was something he'd actually learned to embrace. It was a welcome ally that propelled him to the finish line while it forced others to quit. The mind controlled the body. It could tell muscles and joints to ignore all kinds of warning signals. The problem, though, was that those warning signs were there for a reason. If they were ignored for too long, the body eventually broke down.

On this warm fall morning, as Rapp took each lengthy stride, he began to wonder if there was something different about this pain. It was his damn left knee again. He'd been trying to work through it for the better part of a month, and he was finally coming to the conclusion that it wasn't going away. No matter how hard he tried to block it out or get past it, no matter how much ice or Advil he used, the pain only worsened. His body was telling him something. It was telling him to stop running.

Only thirty-seven and he was falling apart. It should not have come as a surprise to him, knowing the way he'd pushed and abused his body over the years, but Rapp was the type of man who thought any obstacle surmountable with enough will, determination, and talent. There were the broken bones and cuts from sports as a kid and then in college, there was the inevitable wear and tear that came with competing as a world-class triathlete, and then there were the scars, both mental and physical, of his trade. On the outside were four pucker marks left by bullets that were meant to kill him and two decent-sized scars left by knife blades. On the inside, most of the physical damage done by the bullets had been repaired, but the mental toll his work had left on him was something he simply tried not to think about. His wife liked to tell him his brain was like a basement filling up with years of junk. If you didn't clean it out every year, you were one day sure to be left with one hell of a mess to take care of.

Instinctively, he knew she was right, but the only person who could ever understand what he'd done was someone who had walked in his shoes. And Rapp doubted there was a therapist on the planet who had any practical experience as an assassin. One of Rapp's forms of self-therapy was to never deceive himself. He didn't sugarcoat what he was, even though other people did. In national security circles he was referred to as a counterterrorism operative. He knew it was a nice way of saying he was an assassin. This had never bothered him, but now that Anna was pregnant, it gave him cause to rethink his profession. His days of being self-sufficient, of thinking first and foremost of himself, were receding with each heartbeat of the little baby in his wife's womb. Rapp was not afraid of fatherhood in the least. He was surprised, though, by the feeling of melancholy that accompanied the news. At first he didn't know the source but it came to him soon enough. It was his own unfulfilled relationship with his father. Rapp did not want his child to go through the same agonizing pain of losing a parent that he had. He was suddenly looking at the risks he took on the job in a whole new light. He'd been fighting it since the day he'd fallen in love with Anna, but now there was no more putting it off. He owed it to both her and their unborn child. He would have to step out of the line. Let someone else take the risks.

Half a mile short of the end of his run, it happened. Rapp felt a spike of pain and shifted his weight to his good leg just as his left knee locked up like an engine throwing a rod-metal on metal, no more oil to aid the simple mechanical movement. Bone on bone, no more cartilage to reduce the friction. As he hopped to a stop he muttered a series of curses under his breath. He was the only person out on the road at this early hour, but even so, swearing at the top of his lungs wasn't his style. After a few excruciating steps, he realized how serious the injury was and blurted out a single four-letter curse.

Slowly and carefully, he began hobbling his way back to his house on the Chesapeake Bay. The birds were chirping, and the early morning sun cast long shadows across the dewy grass and bathed his face in warmth. All things considered it should have been a glorious morning, but it wasn't. He rounded a slight bend in the road and was surprised to find two people standing on the side of the gravel shoulder another fifty or so yards ahead. The man had his hand on the woman's back and she was bent over. Two mountain bikes lay on the ground next to them. It was not uncommon to encounter someone on this road, but it was almost always someone he knew. There was Mr. and Mrs. Grant, retirees who rose early and walked with their two chocolate Labs. There was Mrs. Randal, the Energizer Bunny, who did her shuffle jog for hours on end, and there were a handful of others who Rapp vaguely knew. He was always polite, but never stopped to talk.

He immediately crossed to the other side of the road placing as little weight as possible on his left leg. His hand reached for his fanny pack. Inside was a FN Five Seven pistol. The weapon carried twenty 5.7 x 28mm armor-piercing rounds. Rapp unzipped the fanny pack and kept his left hand near the opening. Every move was second nature, done almost completely without thought. He checked the couple again. She appeared to be sick, which could either be genuine, or a classic diversionary tactic. He looked at everything he encountered through this prism of primal pessimism.

Ambushes were typically set up in one of three ways. The first, and most common, was to lie in wait and spring the trap on the unsuspecting quarry. The second way was to lure the target in, as could be the case with this couple. Act like you need help and then when that target steps in to offer assistance you have them right where you want them. The third and final way is to distract the target. Get them focused on one thing, and then hit them from somewhere else. At the moment this was what Rapp was most worried about.

In all likelihood the couple was nothing more than a harmless husband and wife out for a bike ride, but Rapp couldn't risk that. He checked over his shoulder and then began looking further afield to his left and right. He knew every inch of this road. He drove on it, ran along its shoulder, and biked on it. His mind was trained to catch anything that was different. He finished his sweep. Everything looked normal. Rapp turned his attention back to the couple. He was close enough now to hear the woman gagging. If this was a trap she was doing a pretty convincing job.

The man glanced over his shoulder. He was wearing a bike helmet and a pair of Oakley sunglasses.

"Everything all right?" asked Rapp. He kept moving, doing his best to mask the fact that his knee was killing him. His left hand stayed poised right above the fold of his fanny pack. Rapp could instantly tell the man was in good shape.

"She's pregnant," the man offered. "Morning sickness."

Rapp gave a slight nod, but didn't respond. He wasn't out to make polite conversation. His eyes scanned the man from head to toe as well as the woman. The man was also wearing a fanny pack, but his was spun around so it sat at the small of his back. There was something about him. A certain lean athletic quality. Broad shoulders, thin waist, developed legs, all three parts in balance. Rapp had worked with guys like him before. His thoughts turned almost immediately to the warning that had been passed along by the Jordanians that there was a price on his head, but they then turned almost as quickly to the new director of National Intelligence, Mark Ross. Could the man be so foolish as to send a couple of his people out here to collect intel on him?

The thought of Ross deciding not to back down got his blood going. Rapp stopped almost directly across the street from the two. His left hand remained poised only an inch from his gun. The weapon was chambered and hot.

"You need any help?" Rapp asked in as friendly a tone as he could muster.

"No, thank you," the man said almost immediately. He glanced at Rapp and then returned his attention to the woman.

"Are you sure?" asked Rapp.

"Yeah. It'll pass in another minute."

"Do you live around here?" Rapp watched the man's every move. He wished he would take his glasses off so he could see his eyes.

"No," the man said. "Just visiting."

"I live nearby. I can get my car and give her a ride."

"No...no...thank you, she'll be fine."

"Where are you staying?"

The man hesitated and then offered, "Not far. A little bed and breakfast just up the way."

As if on cue, the woman stood up and wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She took a swig of water from her bottle and spit it out. She repeated the process three more times and then announced, "Oh, what we do for you men!"

Rapp smiled. He detected a slight French accent from the woman. If she was acting, she was doing a damn good job. Her skin was an awful pale shade of green. Rapp decided they didn't work for Ross.

"I hope you feel better." With that he started on his way again. His knee was getting worse with each step, and he wondered briefly if it wasn't he who would need a ride. He checked back over his shoulder and caught the man quickly looking away. He probably recognized him from some of the unwanted media attention he'd received a few years ago. The couple got back on their bikes and started off, while Rapp hobbled along the shoulder with increasing difficulty.

By the time he reached the front porch, he was no longer able to bend or straighten his knee out of its slightly crooked position. Rapp grabbed the house key from the fanny pack. He glanced over both shoulders and then stuck the key in the first of two deadbolt locks. When the two locks were opened he grabbed the door handle and pulled. Rapp had personally reversed the house's three door frames so they opened out instead of in. The front door, service door, and the frames were made out of steel and covered with a wood veneer. Anyone trying to break in would have to pack a lunch. All of the windows on the first floor were bulletproof. This was his first line of defense. It was what allowed him to decompress and sleep at night. It was a safe house in the literal sense of the word.

Rapp stepped into the foyer, and Shirley was right there with her tail wagging. He gave her a quick pat on the head before disarming the security system. After locking the door he turned the security system back on and limped into the kitchen where he found his wife sitting in her robe, reading the Post and sipping a cup of coffee.

Anna looked up at him, noticed the unusual pained expression on his face, and dropped the paper. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Rapp deflected her question with a shake of his head and continued to the sink.

"It sure the hell doesn't look like nothing," she said.

Rapp clutched the kitchen sink with one hand and poured himself a glass of water. "It's my knee. It's a little stiff...that's all."

Anna set her mug of coffee on the table. "A little stiff? Honey, remember who you're talking to here. You look worse than when you were shot in the ass that time."

Rapp took several gulps of water and then went fishing in a drawer near the sink for some Advil. "Yeah...well, you saw me two days after the fact. You should have been there when I was rolling around in the mud screaming like a little girl."

Somehow she doubted he had acted anything less than manly. "Nice try. Tell me what's wrong with your knee."

"It's nothing." Rapp wrestled with the childproof cap and practically tore the bottle in half. "It's just a little stiff," he lied. "A couple of pills and some ice, and I'll be fine."

Anna folded her arms across her chest, offering Rapp an unintentional show of cleavage. She studied him for a moment and then asked, "What's on your schedule today?"

Rapp succeeded in separating the cap from the bottle and threw three of the pills in his mouth. He chased it with water and steadied himself one more time. "Same old crap. I've got a few meetings at Langley and something I might have to do tonight...but I haven't decided on that yet." Knowing his wife's reporter instincts, he knew he had to ask her a question before she fired another one at him. "How about you? How's your day look?"

"I have a real slow morning." She tilted her head and studied him.

Rapp watched as she shook her shoulder-length auburn hair off to one side and lowered her cute little chin. She locked in on him with her seductive emerald eyes and smiled. The warning bells started to sound as she walked toward him loosening the belt of her robe. Rapp stood frozen while two conflicting parts of his brain wrestled with the whole pain-pleasure principle.

Anna pressed her body up against his and pinned him to the counter. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his ear. "Why don't we go upstairs and have a little fun? I think being pregnant makes me frisky."

Rapp wavered for a second as the pleasure part of his brain scrambled to come up with a position that might work. The pain part of his brain screamed at him to ignore any such thought. The knee simply hurt too much so Rapp smiled awkwardly and gently pushed her away. "I don't think I have time. I've got to shower and get moving."

Anna took another step back and closed her robe. "You're a liar, Mitchell." Flashing a fake smile, she asked, "Do you want me to call a doctor and make an appointment, or will you be man enough to do it yourself?"

He hesitated, trapped in his lie. "I'll take care of it," he offered weakly.

"No, you won't," she said as she finished tying her robe. "I'll call Liz. She and Michael know the best orthopedic surgeon in town." Anna grabbed the phone to call her best friend. "Morning or afternoon?"

Rapp looked down at his knee. It was starting to swell. "You'd better see if he can get me in this morning."

33

DEALE, MARYLAND

Gould took the front wheel off the mountain bike and lifted the back hatch of the Ford Explorer. The bike went in first and then the wheel. Claudia was sitting on a nearby park bench wrestling with another wave of nausea. Gould consulted his watch. It was 7:36 in the morning, and what had started off as a promising day was now an unmitigated disaster. He looked over at Claudia with an anger that he usually reserved for people who had threatened him. They were at the city park and there was no one around, but still this was not the place to have this conversation. Her illness had already brought them enough unwanted attention.

He yanked her bike off the ground and flipped the release for the front wheel. The bike was light but even so, Gould tossed it around like it was a kid's trike. He'd purchased both bikes the evening past at yet another massive sports superstore across the highway from the hotel they'd found in Bowie, a suburb of DC. There were a few motels and bed and breakfasts closer to Rapp's, but they didn't offer enough anonymity. Gould already imagined Rapp calling the handful of bed and breakfasts near his house to see if a couple fitting their description had checked in. He was just that type of man, Gould supposed. Very thorough. Gould was not one to come unnerved, but meeting Rapp had sent a chill down his spine that he hadn't felt since he'd been surrounded by an angry mob of machete-wielding Hutus in Rwanda while he was serving in the Foreign Legion.

The man had been less than a mile from his home, the one place where Gould expected to find him with his guard down, but he couldn't have been more wrong. Gould hadn't even noticed him at first. He was helping steady Claudia. She had started to feel queasy as they approached Rapp's house, but the first wave passed so they continued on. They had made it to his house and then turned around and were on their way back to town. That's all they had planned on doing-a simple drive-by. Gould wanted to get the lay of the land and confirm what his eyes could only guess in the dark of night. He also wanted to explore the possibility of making it look like an accident. The German was offering an extra million dollars, and while Gould wasn't crazy about the added risk, he would at least give it consideration. Claudia pulled over abruptly about a half mile past Rapp's house and began throwing up. At this point Gould was still calm. They had seen both cars in the driveway, and it was before 7:00 in the morning. Claudia would get this over with in a few minutes and they would move on, no one the wiser to their presence.

The last thing Gould had expected was to come face-to-face with his quarry. Then Gould heard something and looked over his shoulder, and there in the flesh was Mitch Rapp. He had gotten very close, too close, and had done so without intentionally stalking Gould. It was supposed to be the other way around. His only saving grace were the sunglasses that covered his eyes. Eyes were by far the most difficult feature to change. Behind the shield of tinted glass, Gould watched Rapp's every move with keen interest. He saw how the American's left hand remained poised just above the pack he wore around his waist. Gould had zero doubt what was concealed in the pack, and he also had zero doubt that Rapp could draw and fire the weapon in the time it would take most people to blink. He also knew it was almost a certainty that Rapp would hit his target.

While the chance encounter was not something that Gould would have preferred, everything up to this point was manageable. Rapp had seen him, but thanks to loose-fitting clothes, the helmet, and the sunglasses there really wasn't much to go on. Rapp asked him a question and Gould was forced to answer. Still, everything was fine. Gould spoke such flawless English that there was no way for Rapp to glean that he was French. Then Claudia decided to open her mouth and ruin everything.

They got in the truck and drove back to the hotel in silence. Claudia reclined her seat as far as it would go and covered her eyes. When they got to the hotel they entered through one of the side doors. Claudia dropped onto the bed with her workout clothes still on. She kicked off one shoe and then the other. She let out a moan and covered her head with one of the fluffy pillows.

"Close the curtains, please," she said from under the pillow.

He yanked the fabric shut with such force that he practically pulled the whole thing off its rails.

She cracked one eye and lifted the pillow. "What are you so upset about?"

He stopped his pacing and stared at her. "Why in the hell did you open your mouth back there?"

"Back where?"

"On the street. In front of Rapp."

She pulled the pillow down and muttered something.

"What in the hell were you thinking?"

"I was sick. I didn't even know it was him."

"Do you realize what the stakes are? Do you have any idea what you did by speaking back there?"

"You are overreacting," she groaned.

"The hell I am. If we fail, you don't think he's going to remember that couple he ran into one early morning? The woman with the French accent, and the man she was with?"

"He didn't see our faces."

"He didn't need to. All he needs to do is put out a general physical description of us and then stipulate that the woman was French. How many male/female teams do you think there are?" He stared at her waiting for an answer that he never got. "Not a lot to start with, but add the fact that he now knows the woman is French and he's narrowed the search down to only a few people."

"Then let's quit. Let's just walk away from it and keep the German's money."

Gould didn't speak for a second. He just gawked at her stupidity. "Have you lost your mind?"

"Then give the money back. I don't care...just leave me alone. Can't you see I'm not in the mood to argue with you right now?"

"You sure picked a hell of a time to get pregnant."

She lifted the corner of the pillow and looked out at him with an angry eye. "Believe me, you had something to do with it."

"Why now? We've been having sex for years and it's never happened before." He had wanted to ask this question, but until now had been too worried about how she might react. Now he simply didn't care.

"It happens," she replied with a tinge of anger in her voice.

"Bullshit," he growled. "You stopped taking the Pill, didn't you?"

"Va-t'en. Je ne me sens pas bien."

"Speak English," he snapped.

"Go away. I don't feel well, you bully."

Gould's jaw clenched in anger. He hesitated for a second, fighting the urge to press his point. He decided he needed to get away from her before he said something they would both regret. He marched across the room and grabbed one of the backpacks. He threw the pack over one shoulder and left without saying another word.

HE STOPPED AT a nearby gas station and filled the tank. He also got some coffee and a donut that he regretted buying soon after he'd wolfed it down. Before pulling out of the lot Gould checked the GPS tracking device he'd placed on Anna Rielly's car. The screen on the handheld device was only three inches by three inches and was not capable of the detail that Claudia's laptop provided, but for now it would do just fine. A quick check revealed that she was on her way back into the city. More than likely she was on her way to work. Gould had placed three devices in her car. The first, the one he stuck under the dashboard, was a simple bug. Anything she said while in the car would be relayed to a digital recorder and scanning device in the trunk. That small black box also randomly scanned the most common frequencies used by cordless phones. It had an effective range of up to 100 feet. It also contained a small digital phone so it could be accessed remotely. The third device was the GPS transponder itself, which allowed him to track the location of the vehicle.

Gould plugged an earpiece into his Palm Pilot and dialed the number to connect with the scanning device in Rielly's trunk. At the prompt he punched in the four-digit code and waited with the Palm Pilot's thin black stylus poised above the screen. He followed several more commands and then waited while the data was transferred from the scanner to the handheld computer. The code on the bottom of the file told him that he had sixteen minutes and eighteen seconds worth of conversation. As soon as it was done he erased the recordings on the scanner and ended the connection. The scanner in Rielly's trunk could hold up to five hours of digitized phone conversation, which for his purposes should be more than enough. Gould opened the audio file on his Palm Pilot and began replaying the time-stamped conversations. The first one was from the night before and was nothing more than Rielly listening to the radio on her way home from work. Gould fast forwarded through parts of it to make sure he didn't miss anything. Eight minutes and thirty-seven seconds into it she made a call to a girlfriend named Liz. She asked how her godson was doing and began talking about babies. Gould skipped ahead. He would go back and listen to every word later, but for now he wanted to hear if he had Rapp talking on the home phone.

Gould put the car in drive and pulled out onto Annapolis Road. A few blocks later her car took the Blue Star Memorial Highway south. His plan was to spend the rest of the morning familiarizing himself with the countryside. When he lived in the States he'd spent a little time in both Annapolis and Baltimore and had gone on two cruises of the Chesapeake. One was for school and the other was a private outing, a day of sailing that Gould remembered fondly. A friend of his father's had taken them. His sisters and mother were left at home. Gould remembered it well because they had entered a regatta and it had been thrilling. The weather was perfect; sunny, warm, and blustery.

He had spent zero time, however, in the area where Rapp lived just south of Annapolis. He wanted to make sure what the map showed actually existed, and was where it was supposed to be. In a country like America this was not usually a problem, but in some of the Third World hell-holes where Gould had served, good maps were rare. No matter what, though, a map was still just a map. A flat representation of a real place. It helped with names and places, but still, to get a real sense of what was out there, you had to see it with your own eyes. Maps, unless they were extraordinarily good ones, did not show foot paths through the woods, they did not show clumps of bushes, and they did not tell you which way the wind blew. And then there was the change of seasons to consider. What might be a great place to lie in wait in the summer might be useless in the winter. All of these things needed to be experienced firsthand, but still one had to be very careful. Especially when dealing with a man like Rapp. Reconnaissance was only useful in a situation like this if your target remained oblivious to the fact that he was being watched. Reconnaissance was in many ways the most difficult aspect of Gould's job. Training and planning were important, but they were things that he could control in an almost lablike setting. Reconnaissance meant that he had to expose himself.

Gould continued south for approximately five minutes and then turned east. Most of the cars were headed west at this point so traffic was light. He continued to play the recordings as he went, half listening, half thinking about how quickly the ebb and flow of the operation had turned. Everything had gone so smoothly until this morning. They'd had no trouble entering the country, all of the money was safely transferred into untraceable accounts, and they had followed Rielly home without incident. And then they had come face to face with Rapp and Claudia had opened her mouth. This was exactly what Gould was thinking when a snippet of the recorded conversation caught his attention. He could scarcely believe what he was hearing. He was still in a surly mood, upset with Claudia and believing firmly that she had gotten pregnant intentionally. He was lamenting how quickly things had turned when lady luck came roaring back into his life via a simple phone call. The conversation had taken place between Anna Rielly and a friend barely an hour ago. That phone call was followed quickly by a second one where Rapp's wife was making an appointment for him to see a doctor. An orthopedic surgeon. The next conversation was the doctor calling for Rapp. He asked Rapp to explain the problem. The short version was that Rapp could barely bend his left knee. The doctor told him to try and stay off it and come in immediately. They would do an MRI and then decide if he needed surgery.

Gould pulled over to the side of the county road and checked his map. Now that he thought back on it Rapp had been walking with a slight limp when he'd seen him earlier in the morning. Surgery, he thought to himself. Could I be so lucky? If Rapp had to go under the knife, he'd be laid up for a while and Gould's job would be made significantly easier. Gould yanked the car back into drive and waited for a small tanker truck to pass. Gould was already plotting, exploring any possible way he could make Rapp's death look remotely like an accident. A car crash would be difficult with the type of vehicles they drove. As long as they were wearing their seat belts both the BMW and the Audi would protect them from any crash Gould could help orchestrate.

Several hundred yards ahead, Gould watched a truck turn off the road. At the moment he didn't think much of it, but as he slowed for a stop sign he looked to his left and noticed the truck parked in the driveway of someone's home. The driver was out of the cab and dragging a hose over to a silver tank next to the house. Gould read the stenciled lettering on the door. Chesapeake Bay Propane Co. Underneath was a phone number and address. Gould memorized both and continued on. He remembered some obscure fact that he'd picked up years ago. Where, he could not remember, but it had something to do with natural gas being odorless. He tried to picture Rapp's house, but couldn't be sure. It was a possibility, he supposed. How else would they heat their homes in this rural area? After he got to Rapp's house he would look into it. The extra million would come in handy, and if it was done right, there would be no reason for the CIA to come looking for him. They would of course suspect foul play, but without hard evidence, there would always be doubt.