“Last I heard, Mitch.”
Rapp wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Whether he wanted to see his friend struggling to cling to the last few moments of life or if he’d just rather see him gone. He told himself that it didn’t matter. Everyone ended up the same way eventually.
Kennedy appeared from a door to his right, wearing a meticulously pressed gray suit jacket and skirt, but looking tired. Her dark hair was pulled back, making the sadness on her face even more stark.
“I’m glad you made it.”
“Where is he?”
She led Rapp down the corridor to a transparent wall that looked in on one of the hospital’s intensive care units. With the bandages on his head and a respirator covering much of his face, Coleman was almost unrecognizable. A small patch of blond hair and an exposed arm full of needles were the only things left to identify one of America’s greatest and most loyal warriors.
Maslick stared through the glass for a few seconds and then just walked away, his broad shoulders sagging in a way that actually made the man look small. He’d lost his best friend, Mick Reavers, in a firefight only a few months ago. The price of America’s war on terrorism had begun to weigh heavily on him.
Rapp saw motion in his peripheral vision and glanced right to see a figure approaching with two cups of coffee. For one of the few times in his life, he wasn’t able to hide his surprise.
Claudia Gould put down the cups and rushed forward, throwing her arms around him. “I’m so sorry about your friend, Mitch.”
He just stood there, unsure how to react. Kennedy watched carefully from a few feet away. There was no question that she was the one who had called Claudia. The two women had a long and complicated relationship that had only gotten stronger after Hurley had killed Claudia’s husband. But why bring her here now?
“I know how close you and Scott are,” she said, pulling away but keeping her gaze on him.
“Thanks,” he said, taking a hesitant step back.
“When we met again, I thought I would be telling you all about your house and the horrible amount of your money I’m spending. It seems stupid now.”
The strange thing was that he wanted to hear about the house. He wanted to go with her to see it and to listen to the endless details of how she’d chosen things he had no interest in at all.
“How’s Anna?”
“She misses her new home and her new friends, but Irene’s son has been spending time with her and she’s quite taken with him.”
“I’ll get the two of you back to the Cape, Claudia. I promise.”
“I know.”
The silence that followed dragged out until Kennedy reached for Rapp’s arm and gave it a gentle tug. “Could you excuse us for a few minutes, Claudia? I need to talk to Mitch.”
“Yes. Of course,” she said, suddenly looking a bit uncomfortable. “Should I… Should I stay here?”
“I’d appreciate that. Please let us know if there’s any change.”
Her discomfort was understandable. It seemed almost certain that at some point she’d created a dossier on Coleman. History, habits, address, family ties-all designed to give her husband an edge if he ever came up against the man. Now she found her world turned upside down. The people she had once spent time calculating out how to kill were now her protectors.
Rapp followed Kennedy down an empty hallway. “Any new information?”
“On Scott’s condition? No. He’s on intravenous antibiotics but the doctors don’t think they’ll work. They keep telling me he won’t make it another hour, but he keeps proving them wrong.”
They entered a break room and she took a seat in a plastic chair at its center. Rapp pushed the door closed, not speaking again until the latch clicked.
“What’s Claudia doing here?”
“I thought you could use a friendly face.”
“Are you trying to handle me, Irene?”
“We just lost Stan. And now this. I’m not trying to handle you, Mitch. I’m trying to help you keep perspective.”
“Have you talked to his mother yet?”
Kennedy shook her head. “Her dementia is worse than Scott let on. That’s the other reason Claudia’s here. He has no family other than his mother, and his close friends are all in Pakistan working for you. I can provide him with security but I can’t stay here for much longer. Claudia can.”
“What have you got on the guy who did this?” Rapp said, changing the subject.
“We’re still working on it.”
“I don’t want to hear that you’re working on it, Irene. I want to hear that you know who he is and where I can find him. If the people you have on this don’t start providing me some actionable intel, I’m going to come to Langley and crack some skulls.”
“I understand, Mitch. I do. But we have more pressing issues than revenge right now.”
“What issues?”
“We’ve ID’ed two of the men Scott killed. They weren’t al Badr. That was likely just a piece of misinformation to throw us off track. They were ISIS.”
“So you can identify two random Arab assholes but not one of the top professional killers on the planet?”
“It wasn’t hard. And one of them was British. Both of them had Facebook pages identifying themselves as members of ISIS and putting their area of operation as Iraq. I think we can be confident that the man who attacked Scott is less active on social media.”
Rapp walked to a soda machine in the corner. The change slot had been taped up so he slammed a hand into one of the buttons and was rewarded with a cold Coke. He would have preferred something stronger but had sworn off alcohol until he pulled his life together. Something that, at this rate, might take a while.
“Look, Mitch. We have to consider a few things.”
“What things?” he said, opening the can.
“First, the possibility that the fissile material in that weapon wasn’t the primary target. That it was just an ancillary benefit.”
“What was the target then?”
“You. Think about it. We get information from one of our most trusted informants leading us to an abandoned manufacturing plant where a highly trained assassin is waiting. The reasonable assumption would have been that you-not Scott-would be the one to enter the building. And that assumption would have been right if your motorcycle hadn’t broken down.”
“Yeah. The same thing occurred to me.”
“Whoever’s behind this wasn’t able to distract you in South Africa so they decided to get rid of you. That seems obvious. And unfortunately, the why of it also seems obvious.”
“Because their move against that warhead wasn’t a onetime thing. They want me out of the way so they can get more.”
She nodded. “Either warheads or fissile material. And if it’s the latter, they may already have it. How much of Pakistan’s arsenal might already be compromised? How many of their warheads now have empty fuel canisters? ISIS could be creating dirty bombs for deployment in U.S. cities. Worse, they could be developing their own nuclear weapons.”
“ISIS? Look, I know they’re getting more sophisticated now that Saddam’s old generals are taking command positions, but building a nuke? That seems far-fetched.”
“Yesterday, I would have agreed. But, according to Craig, whoever manufactured that decoy canister is extremely knowledgeable and well equipped. It doesn’t take much anymore, Mitch. You know that. It won’t be long before nuclear weapons technology is a century old. In an age of computer-aided design, CNC machines, and 3-D printers, how hard is it really to put a weapon together? It’s the fuel that’s difficult. Weapons-grade fissile material takes an enormous amount of infrastructure to create.”
“And then there’s the Russian involvement,” Rapp said.
She nodded. “Beyond Ilya Gusev in Africa, we’ve got the pictures of the man who attacked Scott. Based on his features, I’d say there’s greater than a fifty percent chance that he’s of eastern European descent.”
“But what’s in it for the Russians? Why would they get involved in something like this?”