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PETER CAMERON HAD left Rielly sitting in the living room and walked toward the front of the house when his phone started ringing. When he reached the foyer, he answered it and heard the familiar voice of Mitch Rapp. Cameron left the house and went to stand in the driveway next to his car. He didn't want Duser or his men to hear him talking.
«I'm sorry I haven't taken your calls, but a few things came up.»
«Like what?»
«I'd rather not talk about it over the phone.»
«Does that mean you'd like to meet in person?»
«Maybe.» Cameron hesitated. «If you can guarantee my safety.»
«That all depends on what you have to tell me.»
«Listen, when I was hired to do this, I had no idea who you were, and if I had, I would have never taken the job.»
«That makes me feel much better,» Rapp responded with sarcasm. «Who hired you?»
«I don't want to talk about it over the phone.»
«Then let's meet.»
Cameron leaned against his passenger door. «I would, but something tells me I might not leave that meeting alive.»
«That depends on what you have for me and how honest you are.»
«What I have for you is big! Really big! But you need to give me some assurances.»
«Like what?»
«That I'll live, and you'll leave me alone. That no one from the Agency ever knows who I am.»
«That might be a tough one.»
«Then you can forget it. I'll just disappear and take my chances that you'll never be able to track me down.»
«If I were you, I wouldn't feel so confident about that.»
Cameron looked up at the night sky and gri
There was a long pause, and then Rapp said, «All right, what is it that you need?»
«First thing… I meet you and only you. If I see anyone else around, I'm outta here. Second, I want your word that you will never reveal to anyone who I am.»
«That's going to depend on how good your info is.»
«It's good. It's going to blow you away.»
«Give me a hint.»
«The person who hired me is someone big here in town. Someone you'd never suspect.»
«If he's as big as you say he is, I'll get you a new name I and a new face.»
«I can take care of that on my own. I just want your word that you'll keep my identity to yourself and you won't try to kill me.»
«You have my word.»
Cameron checked his watch. He'd been on the line long enough. «Give me a number where I can reach you.»
Rapp hesitated for a second and then gave him the number to his mobile phone. «When are we going to meet?»
«Tomorrow morning around sunup. I'll call and give you instructions. I'm going to run you through some paces, and if I see anyone following you, I'm gone.» Cameron pressed the red button on his phone and laughed. It was too easy. Rapp was going to walk right into the trap. The man had no idea they had Rielly.
THE VAN WAS stopped. They had pulled over on 23rd Street between the State Department and the Navy Bureau of Medicine. Dumond worked the keyboard of the laptop on his right while Rapp and Coleman watched. After a few seconds, the boyish Dumond looked at Rapp and said, «We weren't even close.»
«What do you mean?»
«He's not even in the city. Hell, he's not even in the county.»
«Where is he?»
«He's out by the bay. South of A
Rapp jumped up from the bench seat and looked over Dumond's shoulder. «Show me where the tower is.»
Dumond pointed to the screen. «Right here. By Mount Zion.»
Rapp squinted at the screen, trying to decide if this was a coincidence or not. Keeping his eyes on the map, Rapp asked, «You said you've got a log of calls he made for the last four months.»
«Yep.»
«Has he ever used this tower before?»
Dumond grabbed the printout and flipped through the pages. It took him twenty seconds to scan the entire list. When he was done, he looked up at Rapp and said, «This is the first time this tower has handled a call for him.»
Noticing that something was bothering Rapp, Coleman asked, «What are you seeing that I'm not?»
«My house is about two miles from there.» Rapp pointed to the screen.
«Hmmrn.» Coleman scratched his chin and looked at the map. «They could have taken A
«Yeah, they could have.» Rapp opened the small door leading to the driver and said, «Take us out to two-fourteen. Let me know as soon as we cross three-oh-one.» Rapp closed the door and looked at Coleman. «Tell the boys we're going out to Maryland.» He quickly punched Stansfield's number into his phone. When Ke
«I can scramble one out of Andrews. I'd say they could 'be there within ten or twenty minutes.»
«Good. Get them airborne on the double.»
«Mitch, what's going on?»
«I can't get into it right now. Get the chopper moving, and call me back.»
37
The small hangar sat on a secluded portion of the massive Andrews Air Force Base, just south and east of Washington, D.C. It was ma
As the four-bladed chopper began to roll away from die hangar, the copilot asked the control tower for permission to take off and gave them his desired heading. The request was granted almost instantly. No flight plan would be filed. No record would be kept of the helicopter's departure.
The pilots were both alumni of the Army's famous 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, based out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The group was known as the Night Stalkers. Both men had flown together in the dangerous skies over Somalia back in 1993. They considered themselves lucky to be alive. Several of their closest friends didn't make it back from that deployment.
The power was increased to the twin-turbine Allison 250-C40B engines. The helicopter lifted gracefully from the tarmac, its three landing wheels instantly retracting into the smooth underbelly of the machine. Heading due east, to avoid the main north-south runways of the base, the helicopter reached an altitude of three hundred feet and leveled off. They quickly reached a cruising speed of one hundred forty miles an hour on a loose easterly heading. One minute into the flight, the technician in back gave the copilot the exact location of their target. The copilot punched the numbers into his navigational computer, and a second later the computer gave him an ETA of nine minutes and thirty-four seconds.
The fast and quiet helicopter sliced through the cool fall air. Most pilots would be nervous flying at three hundred feet during the day, let alone a dark overcast evening, but these pilots were different. They had been trained by the U.S. Army to fly in the worst weather conditions possible, and in helicopters that were far less responsive than the Bell 430. To them, going from the noisy drab green choppers of the Army to the sleek, shiny; and quiet Bell 430 was like going from a Ford Taurus to a Jaguar.
As they neared the bay and the bright lights of the city faded behind them the pilots do