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“Do you have a long bar? For leverage on your wrench?”
Maslick’s brow furrowed.
“He used to be an engineer,” Rapp said quietly. “You’re going to hear a lot about that over the next few weeks.”
The big man shrugged. “A breaker bar. Yeah. There’s one hanging on the wall.”
“What about fire?” Kadir pantomimed holding a propane torch.
“Got one of those, too.”
He nodded approvingly and opened the hood. When he leaned in to examine the motor, his underwear slid most of the way down his ass.
“He’s got some mental problems,” Rapp commented.
“You don’t say?”
“This is a Kamaz-740 engine,” Kadir said. “The Russians make very bad machines, but this is one of their best. Not sophisticated, but reliable. Where are the explosives?”
“Explosives?” Maslick said.
Rapp ignored him and responded in Arabic. “In another location, Kadir. Don’t worry, it’s all top-of-the-line. But we’re not to talk about these things, remember?”
Maslick motioned Rapp toward a shadowed corner of the building. “Are you going to tell me anything at all about what I’m doing here, boss?”
“The less you know the better.”
“But this isn’t an Agency op, right? That’s what Scott said. It’s private.”
“Completely private. Irene has nothing to do with it,” Rapp said, heading back toward his bike. “Enjoy your new roommate.”
CHAPTER 40
SOUTH OF AL-QADR
SYRIA
THEsky was typically clear and awash with stars. This far from civilization there was no artificial light, allowing the smear of the Milky Way to be silhouetted against distant mountains. Rapp hung an arm out the pickup’s window, directing the cool night air into the cab. He was less than ten miles from his destination and hadn’t seen another vehicle in forty-five minutes. Exactly as he’d hoped.
Secrecy was a key component to success, but also a depressing reality if he failed. A few years ago, the idea of his body rotting in an anonymous Middle Eastern ditch wasn’t something that much bothered him. In fact, it seemed like the inevitable conclusion to the life he’d led.
Claudia and Anna changed that. They had serious enemies—a fact that had recently come into sharp focus. If he died, who would protect them from the people who wanted to do them harm? Suicide missions in service of God and country had felt vaguely romantic when he’dstarted in the business, but now they felt like a betrayal of a woman and a girl who needed him.
Threats like bioweapons and assaults on America’s power grid were easy calls—they would devastate everything in their path, including Claudia and Anna. The threat that Aleksandr Semenov posed was different. His strategies relied on an endless supply of willing victims. Politicians thirsty for a level of power that only dictatorship could provide. Media companies who sold fear and hate for advertising dollars. A populace eager to take dangerous narcotics and accept any lie that confirmed their tribal biases. Did he really want to give his life for people so willing to trade their freedom for an opportunity to unleash their rage and hate? He’d spent decades in the Middle East drowning in both, and now that the same attitudes were exploding across his own country, he wasn’t sure it was his problem.
So what the hell was he doing? He could have found a way to slip across the border into Iraq or Turkey. Instead, he’d called Irene and convinced her to back this operation. Why? Was it just habit? Did he live his life like he was strapped to the front of a rocket because he had to? Or because he liked it?
All things to be considered at a later date. Always a later date.
The road surface steepened as he circumnavigated a rocky outcropping. Instead of following it, Rapp eased the truck to the right, kicking up a cloud of dust as he left the pavement and parked out of sight of it.
After turning off the ignition, he stepped out and searched the darkness for anything out of the ordinary. Having spent the last two nights working his ass off in that exact spot, he’d developed an intimate enough understanding of the environment to notice anything amiss.
Satisfied that everything was as he’d left it the morning before, he strode toward a couple of softball-sized rocks and kicked themaway. That allowed him to drag back a sandy canvas tarp and reveal a hole the size and shape of a shallow grave. After that, he walked the pattern he’d created, uncovering other holes of varying sizes, depths, and shapes. Each dug by him using nothing more than a shovel and a pick.
Once done, his phone suggested that he still had fifteen more minutes of solitude. He used the time to empty the truck’s bed of various footlockers, cardboard boxes, and even a plastic tub that looked like the one Claudia used to store her sweaters. In Syria, you took what you could get.
The footlockers were heavy enough that he had to drag them, leaving a trail he would have to deal with before leaving. He dropped them and the rest of the gear into appropriately sized holes, then re-covered them with the canvas. A few artistically placed stones and shovels full of sandy soil made them melt back into the landscape.
