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Rapp would have smiled if his lips hadn’t been so badly damaged. Despite no hope of closing the distance between them, the man still seemed to be searching for an opportunity to attack. Not well trained, but motivated. That was better than nothing.
“I had one of my men snap Eric Jesem’s neck and then we stuffed his body down a garbage chute.”
Laleh’s brow knitted for a moment and then she started to understand.
“He asked me what city this was,” she said in Arabic. “And the lamp! He let me hit him in the face over and over before he took it from me. He wanted me to do it! He wanted me to damage his face!”
Her brother just shook his head. “No. He’s clever. We know about him. He’s from a rich family in America. He went to college. Then he came here to kill people who have nothing to do with him. Don’t believe him, Laleh. He’s the devil.”
“Did Eric Jesem speak your language?” Rapp said, switching to flawless Arabic.
They just stared silently up at him.
“Like you say, he was a thirty-two-year-old American who grew up in Colorado, went to college, and then took a job as a Realtor at his father’s company.” Rapp pulled up his shirt, revealing not only the recent damage done by Maslick but years of healed battle wounds: puckered bullet holes, jagged knife scars, and the more precise lines created by surgeons’ scalpels. “Do men like Jesem look like this?”
They were too stunned to respond.
“What’s the name of the general who brought me to the square?”
Laleh finally found her voice. “Mustafa. Ali Mustafa.”
Rapp vaguely recognized the name. Not one of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle, but still high up in his army. Artillery, if he was thinking of the right man.
“Do you know anything about an operation being run out of here by Mustafa? Something big?”
“There’s been talk,” Mohammed said finally. “No details, but we know it has something to do with a facility outside of town. Mustafa brought men there to train. Eric Jesem was one of them.”
“How many men in total?”
“Fifteen. Maybe twenty.”
It seemed like about the right number. Six weapons handled by two-man teams so as not to raise suspicion. Then some backups in case there were problems.
“Do you have access to outside communications?”
“No. The hard lines have been destroyed and the Americans are jamming cell signals.”
Rapp nodded. “Can you get me to that training camp?”
“Yes. It’s not far. But for what reason?”
Rapp tossed the man back his weapon. “To kill as many of the people there as I can.”
CHAPTER 38
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
U.S.A.
IRENE Kennedy sat down at her desk for the first time in days. She’d barely reached for her briefing file when Mike Nash entered waving a manila envelope. It looked distressingly thin.
“You found him?” Kennedy said hopefully.
Nash fell into one of the chairs in front of her and tried to find a comfortable position. She’d purposely chosen furniture with backs too straight and padding too thin in order to discourage long, unproductive meetings. There were some even less comfortable ones in a storage closet that were brought out during visits by members of Congress.
“Not exactly found. But with Claudia’s data to work with, we’ve made progress.”
“I don’t need progress, Mike. I need success.”