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“I don’t take orders from you,” Hakim said with a derisive scowl.
“Yes, you do.”
Hakim turned and started back for the house.
“Do not turn your back on me,” Karim yelled, but Hakim paid him no attention. Karim had finally had enough. He broke into a run and caught his friend just as he reached the steps. He delivered a quick rabbit punch to Hakim’s kidney and then kicked through the back of his right knee, collapsing him to the ground. Karim then grabbed him by the shirt, threw him onto his back, and dropped on top of him, delivering a flurry of punches to his friend’s face. “This,” he said in between his third and fourth punches, “is a lesson I should have taught you a long time ago.”
CHAPTER 17
LAKE ANNA, VIRGINIA
ADAMS pleaded, then cried, and in between the sniffles and tears he began mumbling to himself. The door buzzed and Rapp opened it to find Hurley standing on the other side, looking none too pleased that he was going to have to shoot his best friend’s son in the head for the second time.
“I should have never stopped you,” Rapp said in an apologetic tone.
“Damn right you shouldn’t have.” Hurley pushed past him, his cane in one hand and his gun in the other.
Adams snapped out of his mumbling trance and began screaming for Rapp to stop. Upon seeing Hurley and the gun, he tried to stand, and forgetting that his ankles were still tied to the chair, toppled over. He caught the edge of the table and brought it down with him, sending the glass and bottle of vodka crashing to the floor at the same time.
Hurley moved into position over him and took aim.
“Don’t shoot!” Adams screamed. “Mitch, wait! I know things! I can help!”
Rapp shared a quick look with Hurley as he walked back to Adams. He squatted and said, “You get one shot at this, Glen. Tell me something worth knowing, and it better be good.”
Adams was lying on his side, the toppled chair still attached to his legs. He looked at the puddle of urine and then at Rapp. “Help me up first.”
“Fuck you!” Hurley growled as he jabbed the gun into Adams’s face.
Rapp stood and again started for the door. Adams began screaming frantically for him to stop and Hurley let loose a litany of profanity that described in very colorful terms exactly what he thought of Adams. To further punctuate each word he stabbed his gun closer and closer to Adams’s face until he had it pressed into his temple.
Rapp was halfway out the door when he heard a name. It was repeated three times in quick succession. Rapp stopped, his interest finally piqued, and turned. “What did you say?”
“Kathy O’Brien!” Adams said with his face pressed into the floor.
Rapp’s eyes narrowed. He wasn’t sure exactly what he had expected to get out of Adams, but the name Kathy O’Brien wasn’t anywhere on the horizon. She was the wife of Chuck O’Brien, the director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. “What about her?” Rapp asked cautiously.
“That’s how I knew about the operation you were running.”
One of the keys to a successful interrogation, at least early on, was to keep the subject off balance. No matter how shocking or strange a piece of information might be, you never let it show. “Which operation,” Rapp asked, “would that be?”
“The mosques.”
“Go on,” Rapp ordered.
“The undercover guys you sent into the mosques.”
Rapp walked back and looked down at Adams. “You mean the operation that was leaked to the Post last week.”
“Yeah . . . Yeah . . . that’s the one.”
“The story you leaked, you mean?” Rapp asked.
Adams didn’t answer fast enough, so Hurley gave him a little love tap with the tip of the barrel—just hard enough to draw a drop of blood.
“Yes,” Adams screamed. “Yes . . . I was the one who told Barreiro.”