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The woman driving the vehicle glanced sideways at him and said, “You were expecting something a little more high-tech perhaps.”
Rapp nodded silently.
Irene Ke
Ke
When Ke
Later, in her motel room outside Syracuse, she retraced her every move over the past eight months and tried to figure out where she had slipped. After three hours and seventeen pages of notes, she still couldn’t pinpoint her mistake. With frustration, and grudging admiration, she had concluded that Rapp had extremely acute situational awareness. She moved his file to the top of her stack and made a bold decision. Rather than use the normal people, she contacted a firm run by some retired spooks. They were old friends of her father’s, who specialized in handling jobs without creating a paper trail. She asked them to take an objective look at Rapp, just in case she had missed something. Two weeks later they came back with a summary that sent chills up Ke
Ke
Ke
Ke
“Why no security on the perimeter?” Rapp asked.
“The high-tech systems … more often than not … they draw too much unwanted attention. They also give a lot of false alarms, which in turn requires a lot of manpower. That’s not what this place is about.”
“What about dogs?” Rapp asked.
She liked the way he was thinking. As if on cue, two hounds came galloping around the bend. The dogs charged straight at the vehicle. Ke
Ke
“The crazy little guy who is going to try to kill me,” Rapp said without smiling.
“I didn’t say he was going to try to kill you … I said he is going to try to make you think he’s trying to kill you.”
“Very comforting,” Rapp said sarcastically. “Why do you keep bringing him up?”
“I want you to be prepared.”
Rapp thought about that for a moment and said, “I am, or at least as prepared as you can be for something like this.”
She considered that for a moment. “The physical part is assumed. We know you’re in good shape, and that’s important, but I want you to know that you will be pushed in ways you never imagined. It’s a game. One that’s designed to make you quit. Your greatest asset will be mental discipline, not physical strength.”
Rapp disagreed with her but kept his mouth shut and his face a mask of neutrality. To be the best required equal doses of both. He knew the game. He’d been through plenty of grueling football and lacrosse practices in the humid August heat of Virginia, and back then it was only a simple desire to play that kept him going. Now his motivation to succeed was much deeper. Far more personal.
“Just try to remember … none of it is personal,” Ke
Rapp smiled inwardly. That’s where you’re wrong, he thought. It’s all personal. When he responded, however, he was compliant. “I know,” Rapp said in an easy tone. “What about these other guys?” If there was one thing that made him a little nervous it was this. The other recruits had been down here for two days. Rapp didn’t like getting a late start. They would have already begun the bonding process and were likely to resent his showing up late. He didn’t understand the delay, but she wasn’t exactly forthright with information.
“There are six of them.” Ke
Around the next bend the landscape opened up before them. A freshly mowed lawn roughly the size of a football field ran along both sides of the lane all the way to a white barn and two-story house with a wraparound porch. This was not what Rapp had expected. The place looked like a rural postcard complete with a set of rocking chairs on the big white porch.