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When Rapp woke again, his confusion had deepened. The air supply was giving out. He lifted his head and a cascade of dirt and rock hit him in the face. Maybe the start of a collapse that would put him in the express lane to hell. He smiled weakly. It’d be good to see Stan Hurley again.
“Mitch!”
He ignored the voice, assuming it was just a figment of his oxygen-deprived imagination.
“Mitch!”
This time the voice was accompanied by a light that penetrated his eyelids and the rush of air. A massive hand grabbed the back of his head, protecting it from a cascade of dirt and rock.
“Mitch, it’s Joe! Say something, man!”
His throat was too caked with dust to get anything out, but he managed to grasp the man’s forearm in a weak grip.
“Wick! He’s alive! What’s the ETA on that fucking chopper?”
Rapp wasn’t able to make out the response.
Maslick withdrew his arm and hammered a shovel into the dirt next to Rapp’s shoulder. “You gotta stop doing this to yourself, man. You’re not as young as you used to be.”
EPILOGUE
Franschhoek
South Africa
THE bottom of the couch had been sliced through during the search of Claudia’s home, but it wouldn’t show. Rapp flipped it back upright and swore under his breath when he saw similar damage across the top. She was already looking to cut Joel Wilson’s balls off, and this wasn’t going to help. As much as he’d like to be there to hold him down, Wilson was continuing his extraordinarily meticulous efforts to clear Rapp’s name. The guy was a complete jackass, but he was competent as hell. His balls were going to have to stay attached for the time being.
Rapp gently lifted an overturned lamp and swore a little less cautiously when it snapped in half. Anna was immersed in the task of cleaning up her bedroom, well out of earshot. It wasn’t hard to pick up on the mood of her mother, and the kid was perceptive enough to lie low.
He picked up the pieces of the lamp and headed outside to toss it on the growing pile of unsalvageable items. His phone began to ring as he started back, and a quick glance confirmed that it was the heavily encrypted number that had gotten him into all this.
“Yes, sir,” he said, turning and walking toward the shade of the wall that surrounded the property.
“How are you doing?” President Alexander asked.
“Good. I think Mas got more beat up digging me out than I did getting buried.”
“I swear you have nine lives, Mitch.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, not mentioning that by his count he was already on eleven.
“Look, I wanted to personally give you an update on Iraq. The guys we sent to confirm your kills started taking fire and I pulled them out. They tagged the spot, though, and we dropped a bunker buster on it. If anyone survived the collapse, I can guarantee you they’re dead now.”
“Unless there was another exit.”
“Let’s just call it a win for now, okay, Mitch? All evidence suggests that you killed Halabi and most of the ISIS brass.”
Rapp wasn’t so sure. He’d been burned too many times to count on unconfirmed kills. Until someone scraped DNA from the shit stain that used to be Sayid Halabi, he’d reserve judgment.
“Yes, sir.”
There was a pause that felt too long for a man who had every second of his day mapped out ahead of time. “I wanted to apologize face-to-face, but Irene says she’s not sure when you’re coming back.”
“Apology, sir?”
“I didn’t want to turn my back on you, Mitch. Sure as hell not for the Saudis. You know how I feel about them.”
Rapp walked to his car and unlatched the trunk, pulling a large, garishly wrapped box from it. “You gave me fair warning, sir. I wasn’t under any illusions about how this was going to go down.”
