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“Yes, sir,” Taj said, watching Shirani’s face out of the corner of his eye. It was an incredible insult but the soldier managed to hide his rage. Undoubtedly he was calculating the extent of his own power versus Chutani’s and the feasibility of engineering a coup.
Shirani’s gaze finally shifted to Taj and this time he didn’t bother to hide his contempt. Instead of looking away, as was his custom, Taj met the man’s stare. It was time to allow Umar Shirani a brief, unobstructed glimpse into the heart of his new master.
CHAPTER 14
THE FARM
OUTSIDE HARPERS FERRY
WEST VIRGINIA
U.S.A.
LOUIS Gould pretended to study the enormous scale model but was actually concentrating on the other men in the room. He had to stay calm and professional. The smallest slip was almost guaranteed to end in his death.
Mike Nash, whom he knew very little about, had been called away. That left three men. Stan Hurley wasn’t just old, he was ancient. It was hard to separate legend from fact with regard to his past, but if even half of the information out there was true, Hurley had at one time been very dangerous. Now, though, he was just a bag of bones with a death hack and a perceptible limp. Taking the geriatric bastard seriously would require some effort, but completely dismissing him would be careless.
Coleman was a different matter. He was probably pushing fifty but still looked like he was chiseled out of stone. As a former SEAL, it was a given that he was a top operator. The fact that Rapp chose to work with him suggested he was a standout in a fraternity that only accepted standouts. The difference between qualifying for the Olympics and walking away with gold. If he had any weaknesses, they were psychological. He came off as a bit of a Boy Scout—a man who believed too much in God, country, and the camaraderie of battle.
Finally, there was Mitch Rapp. A man in a category all his own. No discernible physical or mental weaknesses. Uncanny instincts, no hesitation, no remorse. Decades of experience and training. Simply put, one of the most dangerous men who ever lived.
Despite all that combined history, the three killers were hanging on his every word. It would be easy to start thinking of them as idiots. To let his well-earned arrogance kick in and categorize them as typical marks.
He’d tried to kill Rapp twice before and failed even though he’d had the element of surprise both times. It was a fact that Gould was already beginning to rationalize away, and he fought against that tendency. The day he forgot who he was up against was the day he ended up with a bullet in his head.
“I know you’ve been planning this since the day you signed on with Obrecht,” Rapp said. “What have you got?”
What he had was an entire plan from start to finish. Ironically, though, it was entirely inspired by Leo Obrecht—the man Rapp incorrectly believed was the target of this operation.
Work will be done primarily at the owner’s home in Switzerland. We are looking to take the most obvious route to finding a good fit.
Obrecht knew the CIA was after him and assumed that they would have no choice but to mount an assault on the mansion. Clearly he hoped that Gould could convince them to carry out the operation using the most obvious strategy. It would be an easy sell, particularly to Coleman. Soldiers tended to look at battlefields in predictable ways, and the navy man would have a strong bias toward the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Gould used a pool cue to tap a rocky knoll to the west of the property’s iron gate. “This is the highest point in the area and it’s right where you want it. Range to the wall is just over six hundred meters, and the wind tends to get disrupted by the ridgeline to the south. Easy sniper range.”
Coleman nodded. “My guys have been up there. It’s the only place high enough to get a good view over the wall and you can see right through the gate. Cover’s good, and there are multiple lines of retreat if it comes to that.”
“What about the tunnel?” Hurley said.
“I had Wick crawl down there and take a look. He found the entrance but didn’t go inside in case there were sensors. Based on the pictures he took, the door’s steel. No way to know how thick, no visible way to open it.”
Gould nodded. “There’s a hidden keypad with a twelve-digit combination. I tracked down the man who installed it and convinced him to put in a back door when he serviced the unit. The tunnel comes out behind a shelf in Obrecht’s basement.”
“Convinced him?” Coleman said
In truth, Obrecht had given Gould a personal code that could be temporarily activated should the assassin ever need to access the mansion.
“People tend to get real cooperative when you have a gun in their mouth.”
Hurley took a swig of his bourbon. “True that.”
Gould pointed at the representation of the tunnel entrance. “I’d suggest that me and Mitch go in through there just before five o’clock.”
“Why five?” Rapp said. “That’s still daylight.”
“Yeah, but it’s also happy hour. Obrecht’s careful about never creating identifiable routines outside the mansion, but inside he feels safe. As near as I can tell, he opens a bottle of expensive French wine and lights a Cuban in his study at five on the dot every day. We grab him there, slip him back out the tunnel, and he’s on your plane in an hour.”
Gould let his eyes linger on Rapp, but the man was impossible to read. Was he buying all this?
