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“Major Hansen, I presume.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Another marine, she thought. They were always throwing around Ma’am instead of Ms. She didn’t take the use of the antiquated phrase personally. It was a byproduct of being yelled at by their drill instructors for three straight months while they tried to make it through Boot Camp or Officer’s Candidate School.
“Would you please contact the Global Ops Center and have them get Mr. Rapp on the line for me. I’ll take it in the conference room.”
“Yes, Ma’am. Anything else, Ma’am?”
She considered telling him to stop calling her Ma’am, but figured the call was more important. “Just the call, please.”
Kennedy went into the conference room and set her purse down on the table. While she waited for the call to be connected she tried to guess on a scale of one to ten just how upset Rapp would be. She considered the possibility that this might be one of those rare occasions where she would need to bite back. It wasn’t her style, and it could be a dangerous proposition when dealing with Rapp. Often the best way to manage him was to let him blow his lid and get it out of his system. If it wasn’t something that was her direct fault she could often ride it out in silence and then make him feel bad for losing his cool. She hoped that would be the case this morning.
The large, white, secure phone rang once. Kennedy grabbed the handset and identified herself. The voice on the other end asked her to hold and then a moment later a woman came on the line. It was Agent Brooks. Kennedy asked for Rapp and then waited.
About thirty seconds later a tired, gruff voice came on the line and asked, “What’s up?”
“You’re not going to like this,” Kennedy started, “so I’m going to get right to the point. The president just told the president–elect that you found Gazich and are on your way back to the States.” Kennedy paused knowing it was the next part that would upset him. In a voice lacking conviction she said, “Alexander wants the man put on trial. When you land you’ll be met by the FBI and they will take custody of the prisoner.” There was a five second pause before Kennedy got her reply.
“Have you people lost your fucking minds?”
Kennedy took a deep breath and said, “No.”
“This guy is a terrorist. A hired assassin. A foreigner with I don’t know how many passports and aliases. I kidnapped him, for Christ sake.”
“And?”
“And,” Rapp screamed, “think big picture. Think tactics and techniques. I don’t want the FBI asking me a bunch of questions about how I run my operations.”
“We’ll be able to limit that.”
“Bullshit! You know you won’t. If they put him on trial that means the piece of crap gets a lawyer, and that means I get to spend a week in some conference room getting deposed by a bunch of socialists who do pro bono work for fucking Amnesty International.”
“Mitch, you know I won’t let that happen.”
“You can’t promise that. A year from now, when this all goes down, you’re not going to be in a position to protect me. You’re gonna be writing a memoir and giving speeches for a hundred grand a pop.”
Kennedy was expecting him to be upset, but not this upset. “Mitch, I don’t see the problem. You said you were a hundred percent sure this is the guy. You must have some pretty good evidence against him.”
“Not the kind of evidence you use in court!”
Kennedy detected something in his voice. “Did you torture a confession out of him?”
“No,” Rapp muttered.
“That didn’t sound convincing.”
“I did not torture a confession out of him.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
Rapp muttered something again
, swore, and then said, “I shot him.”
“We can deal with that. I’m sure you had cause.”
“I shot him four times.”
