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Muttering in semiconscious delirium, Fara Harut had unwittingly given them their clue. Within minutes, a massive electronic gathering operation by the National Security Agency was under way. A KH-12 Keyhole Satellite was moved into geosynchronous orbit over the city of Sao Paulo and began recording phone conversations from the Bom Retiro neighborhood. The NSA’s supercomputers at Fort Mead, Maryland, sifted through the thousands of calls and kicked out the ones that matched preassig
ned profiles for content, tone, and voice signature. It had taken three weeks and a day, but the analysts finally found what they were looking for.
The old man continued weaving his way through the crowd, his dirty canvas bag draped over his shoulder. He marked the faces of the people he had seen on his previous visits. He looked at their eyes and checked their waists for the telltale bulge of a weapon. That was how he had found this street the night before last. It started with one man standing in a doorway smoking a cigarette. He had shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and when his unzipped leather jacket opened, it revealed the black steel of a pistol.
Rafique Aziz was near. Rapp could feel it. When he passed the man standing guard in the doorway, he kept his head down and looked the man over closely. A few steps later, Rapp stopped and bent over to pick up a bottle cap he had dropped on a previous pass. When he stood, he looked through the small crack at the bottom of the window shade and spied two men sitting on a couch watching TV. Twenty minutes earlier, Rapp had watched a sedan pull up in front of the row house and deposit a prostitute.
Rapp continued down the street and turned into the alley. He pulled the top off a garbage can and pretended to go through it. Fifty feet away in the darkness of the alley, the hot red tip of a cigarette glowed. Rapp had been adamant about one thing: he would go in alone. No contact with the Brazilian authorities, no electronic-surveillance vans, and no hit squads. Nothing to spook Aziz into running. Commander Harris and twelve of his SEALs were on station—waiting in two sedans a mile to the east and two more to the west. Rapp had convinced his bosses and the president to give him a week. It had taken just three days for his trained eyes to discover what all the expensive surveillance equipment in the CIA’s arsenal would have missed. The simple bulge on a man’s hip.
With each passing garbage can, the alley grew darker and the rats more plentiful. Rapp threw a bottle in his canvas bag and looked up at the second story of the house. The shade glowed a soft yellow as a candle flickered behind it. A figure briefly moved in front of the shade. Rapp licked away the dryness on his lips and felt his heart quicken as he neared the back door.
The bodyguard was only twenty feet away, and Rapp could feel the man watching him. Glancing to the side, he looked for the guard’s hands. One was resting on his right hip and the other on the butt end of the cigarette. Rapp stepped carefully. He was close now, just under ten feet away. He heard the guard’s pistol slide out of its holster and kept about his business. The guard spoke to him in Arabic, telling him to move on. Rapp looked up and acted as if he didn’t understand the man. His hand was still in the worn canvas bag, a firm grasp on the familiar grip of his silenced Beretta 9-mm pistol.
Rapp looked at the barrel of the guard’s pistol. It was pointed at the far end of the alley. Wrong move, Rapp thought to himself, as he squeezed the trigger of the Beretta. A single bullet spat from the end of the gun and hit the guard between his thick black eyebrows.
Rapp rushed the next three steps, grabbed onto the falling man, and eased him to the ground. From his bag, he pulled out a small radio and said, “I’m entering the house.” Leaving the bag next to the body, he slowly stepped into the kitchen. There was laughter from down the hall and voices could be heard from the TV. Rapp closed the door behind him and crossed the kitchen. Straight ahead and down the hall was the front door. To his left, the stairs that led to the second floor, and to his right the two men watching TV with their back to him.
Every second counted. Rapp stepped into the room and leveled his Beretta. The man on the left sensed something and spun around. Rapp immediately connected the face with a name. It was Salim Rusan, the man who had stood on the roof of the Washington Hotel a month earlier and killed a dozen Secret Service officers. Rapp put a bullet in the back of the second man’s head, then hit a surprised Rusan between the eyes. The silencer barely made a noise. Rapp stepped to the dead man on the right and took the remote control from his hand. After turning up the volume on the TV, he started for the stairs. Into his radio, he whispered, “Three Tangos down. Proceeding to second floor.” He checked the stairs quickly and then started up them two at a time. Stopping just short of the top, he listened. From the door straight ahead and to the left came the passionate purrs of a young woman moaning. Rapp took a deep breath; it had come down to this. He grabbed the doorknob with his right hand and pushed.
Rapp rushed the room, his gun sweeping from left to right. To the right was motion. Two bodies intertwined, lying flat. An arm extended above both heads, reaching for something. Rapp took aim and fired. The bullet slammed into Aziz’s elbow, shattering the joint.
Rapp did not hesitate. He moved his gun in an effort to find a more vital target. The woman was in the way, and Aziz was rolling to use her as a shield. Rapp found Aziz’s hip, fired his weapon, and started to close. The second arm was now reaching for the pillow. Rapp hit him in the other elbow. Blood geysered from the fresh wound, and Aziz let out a low, guttural moan.
Rapp yanked the woman off the bed. He took off his wig and spat out his fake teeth. He looked down at Aziz, lying on the bed and bleeding in three places, his arms useless. With the silencer pointed at Aziz’s forehead, Rapp asked, “Do you remember me?”
Aziz looked up in pain, no recognition on his face.
Rapp turned his head to the side. “You cut me in Paris, remember?”
Aziz’s face froze as he searched his memory. After a moment a thin smile creased his lips.
Rapp backed up a step. With great satisfaction he squeezed the trigger one more time, closing a very bad chapter in his life.
“Four Tangos down. I’m on my way out,” Rapp muttered into his radio. He herded the prostitute down the hall and to the first floor. At the back door he told her to get lost and watched her stumble into the darkness. Rapp reached into his bag and grabbed a block of C-4 plastique, setting the timer for twenty seconds. He threw it into the kitchen and closed the door.
Rapp walked casually to the end of the alley, where a four-door Mercedes sedan skidded to a halt. The back door flew open, and Rapp got in next to Commander Harris.
As the driver hit the gas, there was a loud explosion and the dark alley erupted into a fiery ball.
