Kill Shot (11 page)

“Because the assassin is a professional, unlike you. He hit his targets with very few shots while you and your men hit everything except what you were trying to hit. She’s going to find a hollow-point slug in Tarek’s head that is going to match the slugs that killed your men. She’s going to pull a bevy of slugs from the walls that will match the type of ammunition that killed the other two guests and the worker in the alley, and then she’s going to find the surveillance equipment we installed and she’s going to start sniffing around in places where I don’t want her sniffing around.”

“Who cares?” Samir said dismissively. “We will kill her.”

Fournier was done pleading his case to this idiot. He turned to face Max and said, “If he even suggests this again, I will have him killed.”

“I understand.” Turning to Samir, Max said, “Do not open your mouth again, or I will kill you myself.”

“Last night was a bloody mess,” Fournier said. “Libya is raising holy hell, OPEC is furious, and everyone in the French government is enraged that another government might be behind such a bloodbath. A lot of people are suddenly very interested in finding out the identity of this assassin, and who is behind him.”

“So, they will do our work for us.”

“That is my hope. This man has proven extremely elusive, but up to this moment, very few people even knew he existed.”

“Now everyone will be looking for him.”

“Exactly.”

“What about this investigator? Are you afraid she will stumble onto what we were up to?”

Fournier had spent much of the day worrying about this, but he wasn’t about to tell these fools after they’d suggested she be killed. “I will make sure her focus is on foreign intelligence agencies. For now we need the press to continue to report that it was a single assassin.”

“Why?” Aziz asked.

Max finally saw where Fournier was headed. “The assassin has become a liability.”

“Correct . . . Up until now the man has been a ghost. Killing only his targets and a few bodyguards. Last night was a mess. Whoever is behind him is not going to be happy that this one was so sloppy.”

“You think they will dispose of him?” Max asked.

“We’ll see.” Fournier thought of what he would do under the same circumstances. If one of his men had created such disarray, he would most certainly have that option on the table. He needed more information. Two avenues had crowded Fournier’s thoughts. “For now, we need to sit back and see who pops up.”

“Pops up?” Max asked, not understanding.

“Events like this have a way of attracting intelligence assets. The Brits have already called, Libya no doubt has a few men on their way over, and Israel and the Americans have already offered help. It will be interesting to see who shows up over the next few days. We have stepped up surveillance at the airports and the embassies. We will see who comes sniffing around, and with a little luck, they might point us in the right direction.”

Max considered this for a moment and then nodded. “That makes sense.”

As far as Fournier was concerned, it was their only option. He could not afford to draw any more attention to himself. Fournier had been pulled into this because of his relationship with Max. They had offered him a six-figure retainer and hinted in a not-so-subtle way that his help would go a long way toward ensuring their arrangement that Hezbollah and her sister organizations would stay out of France. Seven weeks ago it had seemed a very straightforward deal. Now it was an absolute mess. Fournier should have asked more questions.

“If you want to catch this man,” Fournier said, “it would help to know how Tarek fits in with the other men who were killed by this assassin. Are they linked in some way? Did Tarek do anything while he was working for the Mukhabarat that would cause a country to hunt him down?”

He most certainly had, but Max would have to carefully consider if he would share this information. “I will ask.”

Fournier could tell he was holding back. “Max, our relationship has been one of mutual trust. You are going to have to open up if you want my help, and if that means telling me Tarek double-crossed the Russians or stole money from them or some other country, you need to tell me now.”

“This has nothing to do with the Russians.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Then who? You must have some idea.”

Max did not bother to look at the other two men. “We have some ideas.”

“Then please share them, because if you don’t, you will never catch this man. As it is, he is probably sunning himself on a beach halfway around the world. After something like this, he will lie low for a long time and the trail will grow cold. If we want to catch him, we have to move fast.”

Max was under no illusion that he could trust Fournier, but his points were valid. He could never share everything, but maybe he could give him just enough to help point him in the right direction. “I will pull together what I can and get it to you in the morning.”

“Good,” Fournier said, turning to leave, “and make sure Samir is on the first flight out tomorrow.”

T
HE
bar was decorated in a tacky nautical theme. Thick ropes were wrapped around dry timbers that were meant to look like the pilings of a pier. Fishing nets adorned the walls and were peppered with starfish, crabs, buoys, and nautical flags. A stuffed one-armed pirate with a hook and droopy mustache greeted patrons at the door. Stan Hurley paid the decor a passing glance. As long as they had bourbon and something salty, he didn’t care. Hurley liked to drink. He’d done so on six of the seven continents and had imbibed the best brown liquor that money could buy in the world’s finest establishments, as well as bellied up to makeshift bars in shacks in Third World shitholes and thrown back counterfeited American bourbon that tasted like paint thinner. The Crab Shack at Baltimore Washington International Airport was tasteless, to be sure, but the booze was real, and at the moment that’s all that mattered to the old CIA clandestine service officer.

This Rapp thing had put him in a foul mood—not that he was known for his bubbly personality, but today he was unusually rank. Hurley was a surly bastard, and he’d be the first to admit it. This mess in Paris, though, had him really pissed off. The brown liquid that he swirled around in his glass was helping him focus in the brooding way that so often led him to find the way out of a fucking mess. Hurley blamed himself to a degree, but only because he hadn’t screamed louder and more often and bashed in some heads. Hurley would never dream of laying a hand on Kennedy. She was like family to him, and of course, that was part of the problem. He had survived the blast that had killed Kennedy’s father and had carried the guilt with him every day since. He knew Stansfield was affected similarly, if not worse, and that only added to the problem. It wasn’t that Kennedy didn’t have her talents; it was that they had a big blind spot in their hearts when it came to her. It made it all the harder on Hurley. This was her mess, and he had failed her. He should have jumped in and shut this thing down months ago. He sipped his bourbon and thought back to the first time he laid eyes on Rapp. His gut had told him everything he needed to know. He didn’t like him, and he didn’t trust him. Hurley had tried his best to get him bounced from the program, but Rapp had proven to be tougher to break than he had thought. The little shit had conned them and Kennedy was too naïve to see it. Rapp was all about himself. A one-man wrecking ball, bent on killing every last terrorist son of a bitch he could get his hands on.

A broad grin fell across Hurley’s leathery face. Rapp’s goals at least were worthy. He had to give him that much, but that wasn’t the problem. Hurley wanted to kill the assholes every bit as badly as Rapp did, but it was a bit more complicated than that. This was a delicate business, where patience was every bit the virtue. Yes, you had to have the mind and stomach for killing and getting your hands messy, but you also had to have the patience of a hunter. They called it “clandestine” for a reason. It was important to keep a low profile and keep as many people in the dark as possible. Rapp had blazed a damn trail of bodies around the Mediterranean and had brought way too much attention to their work. They’d argued about it in London only a few months ago. Hurley had tried his best to get Rapp drunk enough to open up. About all he got out of him was that Rapp didn’t care if they knew he was coming after them. He wanted it that way. He wanted his targets sleeping with one eye open. He wanted them to know that he was coming after them.

Hurley had blown his lid. Unleashed a tirade on Rapp, who seemed impervious to everything he told him. When Hurley demanded a response, Rapp calmly explained the psychological toll that he planned on extracting from these men. That it wasn’t enough to simply kill them. He wanted them to lie awake at night and wonder who was after them. He wanted them to spend their entire waking day glancing over their shoulders and looking under every car they rode in and every bed they slept in. He wanted to drive them insane. Hurley knew he had his own issues, but he was starting to worry that Rapp had a screw loose. And then Rapp explained his motive. Thousands of people the world over lay awake at night in agonizing pain, lamenting the loss of loved ones at the hands of these cowards. Rapp wanted them to experience genuine fear. He wanted them to be stuck alone with their thoughts, and have to confront what they had done and realize that it was going to lead to their own death.

Hurley remembered the involuntary shudder that had crawled up his back that night. He remembered looking across at Rapp and thinking he was someone to be feared, and Stan Hurley didn’t fear anyone. Sipping his bourbon at the bar, he thought back to that night in London and wondered why he hadn’t stopped it all then. If he had gone back to the shrink or Stansfield they would have pulled Rapp in, but there was a part of Hurley that savored the idea of unleashing Rapp on these fuck sticks. America had grown too cautious—had turned the other cheek a dozen too many times, as far as Hurley was concerned. There was something basic and satisfying about stepping back and letting Rapp continue on his spree. Hurley knew now it had been a mistake—a horrible one. This quiet little operation had gone public in a very bad way, and it was his responsibility to make sure the mess was cleaned up, before it mushroomed into something worse.

He stared into the amber booze as if it were a fire and allowed his mind to drift down a corridor and consider an option that he was none too fond of using. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d had to kill one of his brothers, but the others had been traitors. Three of them in total over all these years, and he hadn’t so much as batted an eye at the order. He remembered each kill as if had been yesterday. The first two he’d shot in the head and the third he’d nearly decapitated with a long combat knife. He wondered if he would have to kill Rapp. The matter had not been discussed, and as far as Hurley was concerned, it didn’t need to be. Rapp would either get his shit together and come in like he was told, or Hurley would be left with no other option.

The problem, Hurley knew, was Rapp’s maverick streak. The little shit was uncontrollable and clever as hell. He had played Kennedy to perfection. This was her disaster, but Hurley should have been more forceful. It was as if they were two squabbling parents and Rapp was their child. They had argued in front of him, he saw his opening, and he had learned to pit them against each other. He had used it to get what he wanted and now Hurley was being called in to tidy things up. Rapp was cocky, arrogant, and an uncontrollable loose cannon, but one question remained—was he a traitor?

Hurley was of two minds on this one. Part of him hoped Rapp was and part of him desperately wanted them all to walk away from this madness and allow things to cool down. Everything that Hurley had predicted had come true in Paris, and now it was his responsibility to fix it. He’d been warning both Stansfield and Kennedy for months that they were giving Rapp too much latitude. That sooner or later he was going to step in it and create a major incident. They continued to point to Rapp’s results as if the ends somehow justified the means. Hurley knew different. Discipline was paramount in this line of work and Rapp was anything but disciplined. He was a cowboy who had a habit of deviating from the operational game plan as a matter of course.

Hurley took a swig and sucked in some air through his lips. He wanted a cigarette something fierce. Unfortunately, while he’d spent the last thirty-some years trotting around the globe killing bad guys, the wussification of America had taken hold. Now if he wanted to smoke he had to travel halfway back down the concourse to some specially designated glass room where all the smokers were on display like zoo animals. He’d visited the room only once, and was so aggravated by all the uptight do-gooders who walked by with their condemning looks that he swore he’d never do it again.

“Fucking sheep,” Hurley mumbled to himself. “They don’t have a fucking clue.”

“Excuse me?” the man sitting to Hurley’s right asked.

Hurley didn’t feel like it, but he put a smile on his face. “Sorry, just talking to myself.” He stared back into his drink and hoped the guy would drop it. He needed to round up his team and get on a flight. Kicking the shit out of some businessman might complicate things. Fortunately, the guy left him alone and Hurley got back to thinking about cigarettes and how he couldn’t wait to get to France.
Say what you want about the French, at least they still let you smoke.

A looming figure approached from the concourse and grabbed the open stool to Hurley’s left. He saw Victor in the reflection of the bar mirror. That wasn’t his real name, but it was what they all called him. His real name was Chet Bramble, and while he wasn’t very soft around the edges, he was someone Hurley could depend on. Victor didn’t take a shit without asking for permission, and that was the way Hurley liked it. If it had been Victor and him in France none of this would have happened. Victor knew how to follow orders, and Hurley was too smart to miss four bodyguards. For the hundredth time since hearing about the debacle Hurley asked himself how Rapp could have fucked things up so badly.