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“Then she can come?” Mohammed said.
Rapp nodded. “Five minutes.”
CHAPTER 2
Rabat
Morocco
JOE Maslick looked through the dirty windshield at the neighborhood around him. It was better lit than he would have expected but there were still plenty of shadowy corners to park in. At six foot one and 220 pounds, his ability to blend into this part of the world—hell, any part of the world—was crap.
Reason number forty-eight that he shouldn’t be here.
Fortunately, it was late, and human activity was at a minimum. That wouldn’t last forever, though. Before he knew it, early risers would start searching for their morning coffee, kids would begin the march to school, and vendors would begin positioning themselves to pick off the customers who preferred not to shop in the full heat of the day. Someone from that last group would undoubtedly bang on his window and ask him to move his car. But he wouldn’t really know for sure, because he didn’t speak Arabic.
Reason number forty-nine.
“Mas?” Bruno McGraw’s voice over his earpiece. “You copy?”
“Go ahead.”
“We’ve got a car bearing down on your position. Kinda unusual. Makes me think it might be our guy.”
“Unusual how?”
“Shiny new Mercedes S-Class. Two men in front, one in back.”
“So now terrorists are driving hundred-thousand-dollar cars?” he cracked to cover his nervousness. “Maybe we’re fighting for the wrong side.”
This whole op was fucked. His commander, Scott Coleman, was still recovering from almost being killed in Pakistan, and Rapp was off screwing around in Iraq. That left him squinting into the glare of the misplaced confidence of everyone from the director of the CIA down.
“Might be a false alarm, but he’s coming up on the Bani Street turn,” McGraw said. “We’ll see if he takes it.”
Maslick had never wanted to be in charge of anything. When he’d joined Army Delta, he’d decided the way to live a happy life was to pick good leaders and do what they said. It’s why he’d followed Coleman into the private sector and spent most of his career backing up Mitch Rapp. They did the thinking, he did the shooting. It was the fucking natural order of things.
“Yup. He’s turning. Game on.”
Maslick checked his fuel gauge. An eighth of an inch past full, just like it had been five minutes ago. He’d become obsessed with blowing this operation over something stupid and having to tell Rapp that he’d forgotten to charge his phone, or run out of gas, or brought the wrong map. It had gotten so bad that it was starting to interfere with his ability to think straight.
“Did you get any pictures?” he asked.
“Of the car, but nothing decent of the people inside. Too much reflection off the glass.”
“Copy that,” Maslick said, trying to calm down. This was a simple job, which was why it was given to him. A few months ago Rapp had gotten his hands on a rising ISIS star from Crimea. Hayk Alghani had been a con artist his whole life, spending most of his time in and out of jail or on the run. After one of his banking scams had gone bad, he’d run to Sevastopol and holed up in a tenement run by local gangsters. The European authorities got wind of it, though, and in a panic he’d bought a copy of Islam for Dummies and hightailed it to Syria. His history of financial and Internet scams had made him an instant hit and he’d moved up quickly. Unfortunately for him, so quickly that he’d attracted the attention of the CIA.
Rapp had snatched him outside of Berlin and he’d cracked after the first face slap—giving up everything he’d ever done and pledging his undying loyalty to America. Now he was in a run-down apartment less than a mile from where Maslick was parked, waiting for one of ISIS’s top money couriers. A man known only as the Egyptian.
All Maslick had to do was stuff the Egyptian into his trunk and get him to an Agency black site in one piece. By all reports, the man always worked alone, was getting up there in years, and never carried a weapon. Ops didn’t get much easier than that.
Now, though, they were looking at a guy in an S-Class with what sounded like bodyguards. Pretty much the fucking opposite of easy.
Headlights appeared at the end of the empty street and began to approach. Maslick ducked down in the cramped seat, waiting for the vehicle to pass before rising again. Definitely a late-model S-Class. Even worse, it was riding a little too low on its shocks. Armor.
The brake lights came on and it eased left, disappearing from his line of sight.
“Wick,” Maslick said into his throat mike. “They’re coming your way.”
“Roger that. I’m in position.”
