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“Certainty is hard to come by in this business. Particularly when Rickman was involved.”
“Do you see anything on that list you disagree with?”
“You’re thinking about pulling people out?”
“I’m not sure I have any choice at this point. We’ll start at the top and quietly work our way down.”
“You can’t pull them all. You’d do Rick’s job for him. You’d collapse our entire network. Where are you drawing the line?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet.”
Rapp grabbed a pen off her desk and began going down the list. At the seventh name, he stopped and crossed it out. “Ghannam is a scumbag who’s gone through over a million dollars of our money and not given us shit in return. Let him burn.”
He stopped again halfway down. “Prifti’s given us some good intel, and I think he’s got a lot more in him. He controls a pretty serious organized crime outfit in Albania—petty stuff like tobacco smuggling and racketeering, but big money. Tell him to get back there until we straighten this out. His guys can protect him.”
He handed the list back to her. “The rest I agree with, but are you sure this is a good idea? The video of Rickman being tortured already spooked a lot of people and we’ve had a hard time keeping them from running for the nearest U.S. embassy. If it gets around that you’re extracting people, we could end up getting stampeded by every sewer rat we ever gave ten bucks to.”
“To answer your question, no,” she said. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea. Rick would have anticipated it. In fact, he might have been able to write out the list I just showed you verbatim. Every move I make, I have to wonder if I’m playing into his hands.”
She walked to a level-six shredder and fed the page into it. “We need to end this, Mitch. Now. Because tomorrow might be too late.”
CHAPTER 42
CENTRAL AFGHANISTAN
THE ancient stone window frame had only a few shards of glass still clinging to it. Probably the result of an American bomb, but that was by no means a certainty. It could have been shattered in the 1980s by a Russian rocket, or even decades before that in one of the tribal conflicts that predated either of Afghanistan’s most recent invaders.
Fahran Hotaki stood with his back pressed against the wall, looking down on the unpaved street below. The sunbaked car on the other side was well known to him—it hadn’t run in years. The pedestrians were equally familiar, moving back and forth at the strangely unhurried pace of people aware that their lives offered few options. In the facing building, families he knew well were taking advantage of the quiet afternoon to go about the business of survival.
The outward peacefulness of the scene was an illusion that would be short-lived. Joe Rickman had seen to that.
It had been five years since Hotaki’s family was murdered but his hatred for the men responsible wasn’t diminished. None of the killers were Afghan—they were mostly Saudi, with a few Egyptians and Lebanese. These outsiders came to his country to tell his people how to live. How to worship. And they butchered anyone who resisted their twisted view of Islam.
Before al Qaeda had spilled over his country’s borders, Hotaki had been a simple farmer. He’d lived in a remote region of Afghanistan untouched by politics or technology or foreigners. He and his people had inhabited that place for more generations than anyone could remember.
What had been built over the course of a thousand years had taken less than an hour to destroy. He’d seen his sons beheaded, his wife and daughters raped and left to die from their wounds, and his village consumed by flames.
Hotaki had been bound and on his knees when they’d finally come to kill him. The gun had been pressed to the side of his head, but the trigger was never pulled. Instead they left him there among the blackened bodies of all those he had loved, the sound of their laughter
ringing in his ears.
It was shortly thereafter that he had joined with Mitch Rapp and the Americans. Not because he believed in their futile and unwelcome efforts to turn Afghanistan into a modern democracy. No, he’d simply seen them as a powerful ally in his quest to kill the men responsible for taking away his life.
The Americans were a confused and naïve people, but generally the champions of peace and stability. Occupations were not in their nature. Unlike the fanatics who had converged on his country, the Americans could be counted on to leave.
A pickup truck appeared in the distance, slowing but continuing inevitably forward. The people on the street immediately recognized the armed men in the bed, as did he. Not foreigners, but almost as bad. They were members of a Taliban enclave who wanted to extend their influence over the tribal areas and subject Afghanistan to their fundamentalist stranglehold.
The steps of his neighbors quickened as they scurried back to their homes. Hotaki opened a wooden crate at his feet as the rumble of the approaching vehicle mingled with the sound of people barricading their windows.
He put on the flak jacket he found lying on top and retrieved a silver Desert Eagle .44 Magnum that had been a gift from Stan Hurley. A bit garish but highly effective. Much like the man himself. He took the spare magazines but left the silencer and helmet. These men should hear the bullet that killed them. And they should see the face of the man who fired it.
A nearly identical pickup filled with similar young men appeared on the other end of the street but this one stopped. Clearly it was there to cut off the escape of the man they mistakenly thought was their prey.
Hotaki knew that there would be no help from the Americans. As angry as he had sounded, Mitch Rapp could be trusted to respect his wishes. He knew what it was to lose loved ones in this endless war. And more than any other American Hotaki had met, he understood what it was to be Afghan.
The first pickup continued forward, finally coming to a halt directly beneath his window. Was it arrogance or just complacency? The Taliban had elicited so much fear for so long, they had come to expect their targets to do nothing but cower and beg. On this occasion, they would be disappointed.
He could hear them arguing and used the time to ponder his strategy. The handgun was hardly an appropriate weapon when faced with a truckload of armed men. He had an AK-47, but even that would leave a great deal to chance. Certainly, he would kill or wound a number of them, but the rest would take up positions across the street and in the stairwell leading to his apartment. He would be trapped.
