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“I don’t know, Mitch,” Stofer said, shaking his head. “It’s pretty thin.”
“I know it is, but you guys, come on . . . think about this for a minute. Put your covert ops hats on and think about how we plan stuff. The lengths we go to, to lay down deceptions to make something look a certain way when our main objective is something entirely different.”
Kennedy was all for open discussion, but this type of thinking was what led to the old puzzle palace mentality where every other person in the building was a mole. “Are you trying to say Rick was in on this? That he orchestrated his own kidnapping and then endured that horrific beating and that he’s still alive?”
Rapp knew how preposterous it sounded, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was some piece of information that he couldn’t access that would explain his suspicions. He stood and walked over to the window. “I’m not sure what I think.”
“Mitch, I think you’re way out on a limb here.” O’Brien was shaking his head in disagreement.
Rapp turned to face the big Irishman. “Have you read Sid’s preliminary report?”
“No.”
“Read it. Study the photos from the safe house. Look at the precision. Put yourself in the shoes of the people that were trying to get their hands on Rick. It was perfect.”
“I’m not saying it wasn’t,” O’Brien said, refusing to see things Rapp’s way.
“Now look at the other part of this. The same group of professionals fuck up, kill Rick, and then kill each other.”
“That’s what we saw on the tape. It’s pretty hard to argue with.”
“It sure is. The same cool customers that took down our safe house go completely mental just a few days later and manage to capture it on a camcorder and leave it behind for us to find.”
“Heat of the moment. Not everyone thinks as clearly as you do in pressure situations.”
“And some people are devious as all hell,” Rapp said. “We’re seeing what we’re seeing because we want to. The alternative is fucking horrible. Rick is still alive and he’s spilling the family jewels.” Rapp moved back to his chair and said, “Can any of you honestly tell me that you weren’t relieved when you saw Rick die in that clip?”
They all shook their heads.
“Our lives got significantly easier.”
“Mitch,” Stofer said, “I kind of see your point, but these terrorists aren’t always the sharpest tools in the shed. That they screwed up and their failure benefited our larger strategic goals doesn’t mean we’re being duped.”
“I know,” Rapp said, “but I can’t shake the feeling that we’re not out of the woods. We need to take a top-to-bottom look at this. We need to figure out what happened to all of the money Rick was spreading around. Where the hell is his laptop, and do we have any idea what was on it? And the whole time we’re looking we’d better be asking ourselves one question.”
“What’s that?” Kennedy said.
“What if they wanted us to find that camcorder?”
“Oh, come on.” It was O’Brien. “This is so thin.”
Kennedy had her eyes on Hurley. She could tell he was taking a trip down memory lane, accessing his large database of real-life experiences. “Stan, what are you thinking?”
Hurley didn’t hear the question right away. His mind was elsewhere, thinking about the way the game used to be played. “I think Mitch might have a point . . . then again he could be totally wrong, but we can’t afford not to explore it.”
“I’m not sure we can afford to explore it,” O’Brien said. “The harsh truth is that Rick is dead and a lot of people want him to stay that way.”
Hurley started to grumble the way he did when he was about to get angry. After saying a few things to himself he said, “So our new protocol on shit like this is to stick our heads in the sand? That’s one of the dumbest fucking things I’ve ever heard.”
An outsider would be left to think that O’Brien would be wounded by Hurley’s harsh words, but they’d all worked with him so long they didn’t take the rebukes personally.
“Take this thing back to the beginning,” Hurley said, “and it looks like we were being played. I don’t think the Taliban are sophisticated enough to have done this. They may have played a role . . . provided some manpower, they may have even taken down the safe house, but they sure as hell didn’t hire Gould. Whoever was behind this moved pieces around the chessboard like the Soviets used to do. They knew Mitch enough that they could dangle that information in front of him about the dog and he’d jump on it. They had to have been monitoring Hubbard, because minutes after he told Mitch where the vet’s office was, they put Gould into play
and called in their corrupt police general to clean up the mess. That’s not the Taliban. Way too complicated.”
Stofer looked confused. “Are you saying the Russians are behind this?”
Hurley shrugged. He hadn’t thought that specifically, but anything was possible. “I don’t know who’s behind it, but whoever it is, is one devious bastard. They set this thing up and played us. I’m inclined to agree with Mitch. Anyone who goes to that much trouble doesn’t leave the bodies and camera for us to find unless they want us to find them.”
