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“Woman?” Rapp said in a confused voice. He’d been sure they were talking about two men.
“Yes, a woman. It turns out she is pregnant and knows that Anna was pregnant. She feels a tremendous amount of guilt over her role in this.”
Rapp was only half listening. His mind was searching for something. Something that he knew was supposed to be important. The blow to his head had scrambled certain memories, and some of the things that had hap
pened in the days preceding the attack were a bit sketchy.
“She’s a woman,” Rapp said more to himself than Kennedy.
“Yes,” Kennedy replied. “Typically they are the ones who get pregnant.”
Rapp ignored her remedial tone and said, “And her partner is a man.”
“I would assume so,” Kennedy sighed. “And quite possibly the father of the child.”
The scene flickered across Rapp’s mind like a homemade movie. He muttered, “I saw them.”
“What?”
“I saw them on the road the day before my knee surgery. I was coming back from a run and came around the corner and there they were.” Rapp had a clear picture of the two of them. He suddenly recalled that the man gave him a bit of concern. He had that lean, athletic quality that is so prevalent with the Special Forces guys. Kennedy was saying something, but Rapp wasn’t listening. He was focused on the replay of what had happened. The man had said something to him. Rapp could hear the voice. He had said that she was pregnant. The woman was throwing up. He remembered the man’s glasses and wishing he could get a look at his eyes. He’d asked them a few questions and the guy had done all the talking and then finally the woman stood up and said something. There was something unusual about what she said. Rapp struggled to remember what it was and then it hit him. It wasn’t what she said, it was how she said it. The woman had a French accent.
65
ZIHUATANEJO, MEXICO
L ouie kissed Claudia on the forehead and slowly pulled his arm from under her neck. She stirred and rolled onto her other side. Carefully, he flipped back the sheets and slid out of bed. He went to the bathroom to relieve himself and then decided to go out to the patio. Looking out at the ocean he leaned over and rested his forearms on top of the wall. Sunrise was fast approaching. The sky above him was gray, and the sky to the west was black.
Louie was glad he’d come to his senses and abandoned the idea to finish the job. Losing Claudia after all they’d been through would’ve been extremely stupid. He’d recognized before it was too late that it was his ego that had been driving him to finish the job. The desire to be known someday as the man who had defeated the great Mitch Rapp mixed with his need to finish everything he started had blinded him to the reality of the situation. The professional in him kicked in when he was clearing U.S. customs at the Houston International Airport. He had one set of identification, one credit card, no weapon, and just under $8,000 in cash. The likelihood that he could successfully get to Rapp, who would now be alert and protected, was not good. The odds that he could kill the man and get out of the country without leaving a trail were next to nothing.
Ultimately, though, it was that one memory of Rapp the day they had accidentally bumped into each other on the road that had forced him to come to his senses. Louie had spent the entirety of his adult life around soldiers. Men who were trained to go off and fight. They came in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some had overpowering physical presence, but were as dumb as a potted plant. Louie had used these men in the same way one used pack mules. He had them carry heavy machine guns or mortars. Other men were wiry and small, but had great instincts or organizational skills. These men became clerks, or if they had endurance they were trained to be snipers or scouts. Muscle could be added or heft could be taken away. Basic skills could be drummed into the stupidest of men, but instinct was something that could not be taught. It could be discovered and nurtured, but you were either born with it or you were out of luck.
Standing in the Houston airport waiting for the flight that would take him back to DC, Louie remembered the way Rapp had looked at him on that morning, and the way his hand had hovered just above the fanny pack that undoubtedly concealed a gun. They had found out later, from listening to the wife’s conversations, that he had been hurt on that morning. Louie remembered hearing the wife tell a friend that she had never seen her husband in so much pain. At the time Louie was thinking in terms of how he could use the injury to his advantage and hadn’t bothered to connect the fact that despite being in great pain, Rapp’s instincts had still detected something wrong that morning on the road by his house. Like any highly developed predator, Rapp was acutely in touch with his senses and his surroundings at all times.
As the departure for the flight to DC neared, Louie began to lose his nerve for the first time he could remember since almost drowning in a scuba training accident at the age of twenty-one. His subsequent trips to the ocean had been terrifying, and if it hadn’t been for his fellow paratroopers standing right next to him he had no doubt that he would have quit. The only thing worse than his fear of the water was his fear of letting down his fellow brothers in arms. But now, alone in an airport filled with strangers, there was no esprit de corps. His thoughts turned to Claudia and the child that was growing within her. Without any further thought he returned to the Continental ticket counter and exchanged his ticket to DC for a flight to Ixtapa.
Louie looked down at the waves breaking against the rocks beneath him and smiled. He was confident that he had made the right decision. To think that he had almost abandoned Claudia when she’d needed him most embarrassed him. Louie had always sworn that he would never be like his own father. Leaving her like that in the airport, pregnant and traumatized, was just the thing his father would have done.
Louie watched the sailboats gently rock back and forth on the water. This place was special. It was too bad they couldn’t stay here and raise a family.
Just then Claudia came up from behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “What are you doing up so early?”
“I got up to go to the bathroom and decided to come out here and look at the water.” Louie stood up straight and grabbed her hands. “How great is this place?”
“Much better with you here.”
He undid her hands and stood next to her. His arms wrapped around her shoulders and hers wrapped around his waist, they stood there looking out across the bay. With a sigh, Louie said, “It’s too bad.”
“What?”
“That we’re going to have to leave.”
“Why?” she asked, her voice filled with disappointment.
“You know why. It’s too risky to stay in one place for too long. Especially right now.”
Claudia’s heart sank as she remembered the difficult road that lay ahead. She had yet to tell Louie what she’d done in the days they were apart and it was beginning to weigh heavily on her. There was no telling how he would react when she told him, although one thing was certain; the longer she waited to tell him the harder it would be. Claudia rested her head against Louie’s bare chest, and started to speak but suddenly lost the courage.
Louie noticed something was bothering her and asked, “What?”
