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“It’s never that easy.”
“What do you mean?”
“Damascus wants to know why the Russians are so anxious to get their hands on him.”
“We… We get to interrogate him?” the driver said. Unlike his companion, he seemed to think his day had just significantly improved.
“Don’t get too excited. We can’t leave any marks on him. He belongs to the Russians.”
“Buthedoesn’t know that,” the driver said, pulling his sidearm and pressing it to Rapp’s forehead.
Rapp blubbered a bit as the other man started a recorder on his phone. It turned out his English was quite a bit better than his counterpart’s.
“Why are you here?”
“My name is Matthieu Fournier! I—”
“I didn’t ask your name, idiot! Answer my question or my friend here will pull his trigger.”
“I represent Damian Losa. I’m here because he wants to help your government distribute captagon in Europe. Please! Don’t kill me. I’m a lawyer. I’m just here to negotiate. I swear! I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Just ask me.”
The man nodded approvingly, and his comrade returned the MP-446 to his shoulder holster, indifferent to the fact that it was unsecured and within Rapp’s reach.
Rapp didn’t even bother to move quickly, reaching for the weapon and shooting its owner in the solar plexus before putting a round in his companion’s forehead.
They both dropped, but the driver was still alive, gasping from the impact of the round against his light body armor.
“I’ll give you the same chance you gave the kid,” Rapp said in Arabic. “Run.”
He didn’t need to be told twice, immediately pushing himself to his feet and going for the door in a hunched sprint. Rapp walked to the threshold, watching him angle toward the crumbling stone wall that could cover his escape.
Rapp switched the weapon to his left hand and just stood there. With every step, the Syrian would see his odds of survival increasing. By the time he made it to the wall, he’d believe the shot was impossible—a moving target wearing body armor at a significant distance. Maybe he figured that Allah had smiled upon him and caused the gun to misfire. Or that his companion had miraculously survived and attacked the man stalking him. Either way, he’d be increasingly certain that he’d see his wife again. His children. Maybe even grow old.
The pistol was unfamiliar to Rapp and his first round went low and right, extracting a visible puff of pulverized rock from the wallthe man was climbing over. His movements became more desperate as hope turned from motivator to tormentor. Rapp adjusted his aim and squeezed the trigger again. This time, he was rewarded with a subtle jerk of the man’s head. He slumped over the barrier and went still just a few inches from salvation.
CHAPTER 19
RAPPstood in the threshold to the house’s back room examining its windowless interior. The crumbling walls and dirt floor were partially swallowed by shadow, as was the occupant of a straw mattress on the floor. The body wasn’t one of the soldiers, but instead the man they’d murdered. Chest wounds were significantly easier to obscure than head wounds and a plastic bag stuffed in the bullet hole was all that had been necessary to stop it from seeping.
The corpse was bound, wearing Rapp’s expensive suit, and lying on his back with his head turned toward the wall. Even in the tenuous light, he looked pretty dead, but it would be good enough. The Russians had been told they were here to pick up an uninjured prisoner and, in Rapp’s experience, people saw what they expected to see.
Satisfied that the stage was set as well as it could be, he adjusted the Syrian army uniform he was wearing and returned to the house’s living area. There he raked some uncontaminated earth over the bloody mud left by one of the men he’d killed. It didn’t have to be perfect. The Russians weren’t going to be studying the floor. The real problem was the smell. Blood in the heat of a poorly ventilated building wasunmistakable. There was an outhouse in the back where he could find plenty of material to overpower it, though. Then it would just be a matter of waiting.
Rapp saw the dust plume well before the engine hum reached him. He rose from the overturned bucket he was sitting on, improving his view while still remaining in the sliver of shade clinging to the front of the house. Details became sharper as the SUV approached—sun-faded paint, windows tinted enough to obscure the people inside, a missing front bumper. The Russians were even less popular than the Syrian military in this part of the country and they’d wisely decided to keep a low profile.
Rapp leaned casually against the building’s façade as the vehicle skidded to a stop and three men stepped out. All wore desert camo and flak jackets, and all were fairly bulky. The driver actually went beyond bulky and bordered on fat. His forearms were thick and tattooed where they were visible below rolled-up sleeves, but a little formless. Not Russian regular army or Spetsnaz. Almost certainly mercenaries.
Two were carrying AK-74s, while the man with the tattoos had only a sidearm strapped to his right thigh. One of the riflemen hung back behind the vehicle, eyes sweeping the scene confidently. The other two approached, not acknowledging the hand Rapp had raised in greeting. They seemed to have zero interest in him. Exactly as he’d hoped.
“Where is he?” one of them said in Russian-accented English.
Rapp waved them inside and pointed to the empty door frame at the back. The man with the pistol strode toward it with Rapp trailing. As expected, the other merc held back. They’d see the threats as being external, so it made more sense to post a man at the window than to hang together.
The fact that the mattress was positioned so that it was invisible from the living area didn’t seem to bother the Russian as he crouched next to the corpse. Once clear of the jamb, Rapp slipped a knife from the sheath on his belt and came up behind the merc as if to help.Instead, he clamped a hand over his mouth and nose, and then buried the blade into the base of his skull. His body went stiff and then immediately slack, allowing him to be easily lowered to the dirt floor.
“Yes,” Rapp said loudly, using the man’s sleeve to wipe the blood from his knife. “The well has water. I will get some.”
He hurried into the living area with a quick, nervous gait. The man posted there was positioned in a corner that gave him full view of both the room and the window. His rifle was slung across his chest with his right index finger resting just above the trigger.
