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“Body bag bad.”
“I see.” This was followed by more silence and then Kennedy skeptically asked, “And you had nothing to do with this?”
Rapp never liked to be second-guessed by people who spent their days sitting in comfortable leather chairs behind large, important desks while he risked life and limb. “Watch your step,” he snarled. “I don’t need this shit. I’m over here with a fucking rookie, and Blondie and his boys have been stuck in airports all day. What I need is some serious support right now. I need the plane, and I need it ASAP, and then I’m going to need a follow-up team to come in here and do a little cleaning.”
Kennedy should have known by his tone that it was a mistake to question him while he was still in the field. They’d been down this road dozens of times and it never ended well. She relented by saying, “I’ll get back to you with an answer in ten minutes or less.”
“One more thing. Our friends on the other side of the pond…they have a base close by. That would be best. No customs. Freight delivery to the back gate. Make the transfer in a hangar. Real private. No do-gooders shooting video.”
“Absolutely. I’ll arrange it. Anything else?”
“For now that should be enough.”
“Good. Great work! Give me a few minutes to get the pieces moving, and I’ll get right back to you.”
“Thanks.” Rapp disconnected the call and looked down at Gazich. He’d lost a bit of his color and he was starting to shake a bit. Rapp knew he hadn’t hit any major arteries, both by his aim and the lack of blood on the wood floor. Nonetheless, shock was fast approaching. Gazich’s body would be trying to shut certain things down to stave off the excruciating pain. Rapp had no fear of losing him. Gazich was young and fit. He could take it, and he honestly deserved this and a whole lot more.
Rapp squatted down on his haunches and looked Gazich in the eye. “I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me who hired you?”
15
T he plane was big. Bigger than they needed, but Rapp wasn’t complaining. It was a Lockheed Martin TriStar. She was designed to carry up to 400 passengers, or 88,000 pounds of cargo. This one, with its wide body and three big engines, was configured for cargo. She was a sister ship to the venerable DC-10. As far as aviation went, she was a little long in the tooth. From the outside the plane looked like any other international freight carrier. There were no windows other than the ones in the cockpit. The skin was painted a generic white, and the name Worldwide Freight ran along the back half of the fuselage in large blue letters. The CIA had more planes than some small air forces, but thanks to a politically motivated hack in the CIA’s Inspector General’s Office Rapp couldn’t go near them. At least not for something like this.
A little over a year ago, this same bureaucrat took it upon herself to tell a reporter that the CIA was ferrying terrorists around Eastern Europe in a Gu
lfstream 5 and a Boeing 737. Many of these terrorists were high ranking al-Qaeda operatives. They were taken to undisclosed locations and put in uncomfortable situations until they decided to talk, which all of them eventually did. The information they provided proved invaluable in picking apart al-Qaeda’s operational and financial infrastructure. That single leak had crippled one of Langley’s most important operations in the war on terror. Yet again, Rapp was forced to stay one step ahead of his own government.
The strategy with the planes was not very different than the one Rapp used with his mobile phones. The worldwide aviation market was a vast and intricate association of sellers, resellers, leasers, and lessees. Carriers were constantly updating their fleets, replacing older models with newer, more fuel efficient ones. That left a surplus of unused aircrafts. These planes were often kicked down the line, leased and subleased a half dozen times until they either broke down or crashed flying in and out of some war-torn country in Africa. The big Lockheed TriStar was still in good shape. She had been leased for one month through a company in Seattle. The company specialized in subleasing planes on a short-term basis. Their business model was simple. As power companies sold excess power to other utilities, these guys leased planes that weren’t being used during slow times of the year. They had no idea the CIA was their client. Everything was done through an attorney’s office in Frankfurt. The pilots were a couple of old U.S. Air Force colonels who liked cash and knew how to keep their mouths shut.
Rapp stood on the tarmac next to a battered gray Royal Air Force hangar. The big TriStar was inside. The sky in the east was showing the first signs of morning. The humid, salty Mediterranean air rolled in across the flat expanse of the base. There was nothing but asphalt, concrete, dirt, and scrub brush for miles in every direction. About fifty feet away Scott Coleman was talking with a British officer who had met them at the back gate fifteen minutes earlier. Coleman handed the officer something and the man took it. Then they shook hands and the RAF officer jumped in a Land Rover and sped off. Coleman walked over slowly shaking his head. A grin on his face.
The retired Navy SEAL said, “God, I love the Brits.”
Rapp nodded. “They know how to keep their mouths shut.”
“He gets off in a couple hours. He said he’d leave the van in the airport garage with the keys under the mat. All we have to do is call the rental company.”
“Good. And the plane?”
“Refueled and cleared for takeoff.”
“Good. Let’s get out of here before the sun comes up.”
The two men turned and walked into the shadowy hangar. Where Rapp was dark-haired and olive-skinned, Coleman was fair-haired and fair-skinned. Rapp fit in pretty much anywhere in the Middle East. Coleman, with his blue eyes and blond hair, would have looked more at home in Sweden or Norway. Probably Iceland as well. He had the high cheekbones and the stoic demeanor of the Northern Tribes. The stoic part worked well with Rapp. Less was almost always more, especially when it came to conversation. Coleman, like Rapp, was not one for idle chatter.
After Coleman had arrived at Gazich’s office, he and Rapp had taken a moment to figure out a plan of action. Neither liked the idea of staying put. If the police showed up, they would have to explain two dead Russians, another Russian who looked like some African tribe had gotten hold of him, and a Bosnian with four bullet holes in him. Marching everyone out of the café in the middle of a busy Saturday night would also not work. Sitting tight until the place closed was the best option. In order to do that, though, they would need the old man to cooperate. Sooner or later someone was sure to come looking for him.
They untied the old man and sat him down for a talk. The big Russian was still unconscious and Gazich remained silent on the floor despite the obvious pain of his wounds. The man’s name was Andreas Papadakos, and he was the owner of the building. He had met Alexander Deckas five years ago. The man paid his rent in advance every six months. He traveled frequently and had never been a problem. That was until the Russians showed up a few days earlier looking for him. They told Papadakos that Deckas was a hired gun. An assassin. They told him they worked for the Russian State Police and they were there to arrest Deckas and bring him back to Russia for trial.
The old man asked the Russians for identification. They told him not to worry, so he said he would call the local cops. That was when things got ugly. Papadakos had five daughters who worked for him. He had grandchildren coming and going all day. Sixteen of them. The Russians had already cased the place and told him if he called the authorities, or warned Deckas, they would dismember his grandchildren one by one.
Up until this point, the only real opinion Rapp had formed of the big Russian was that he was an irritant. He even felt a little sorry for the guy now that his face looked like one of those latex masks costume shops sell around Halloween. After hearing that he had threatened to cut up little children, all of Rapp’s sympathy vanished.
Over the years Rapp had done a lot of interrogations. They ranged from the mundane, like talking to a street vendor in Damascus about something he may have seen, to threatening to blow a man’s head off. All those years of experience had led to an ability to pretty much tell from the start when someone was being either forthright or deceptive in their answers. Papadakos denied any knowledge or involvement with Deckas. Furthermore, there were the five daughters and the sixteen grandchildren. Why would he endanger them by getting into business with a guy like Gazich?
In the end, the situation dictated what they needed to do. Involved or not involved, Papadakos did not want the cops snooping around. If Rapp found out later that the man and Gazich were full business partners he would come back and get him. Papadakos had spent his whole life in Limassol. He was not going to simply disappear and leave his business and grandchildren behind. So a deal was struck. Once the café was closed, Rapp would get rid of the bodies and the old man and his family could go on living their lives as if nothing had ever happened.
Rapp followed Papadakos downstairs and kept an eye on him. The rest of Coleman’s men showed up a few minutes past 11:00. All three were former SEALs who had served under Coleman. Wicker and Hacket casually walked up to the sedan with the dead Russian in the front seat. Wicker climbed behind the wheel and Hacket got in back. Wicker started the car, put it into drive, and slid out of the space. Fifteen minutes later they found a nice dark alley a little more than a mile away. Hacket got out and walked it from one end to the other, just to make sure it was deserted. Wicker circled back around, drove halfway down the dark canyon, and turned off the car. The dome light was extinguished and the trunk popped.
