Review
------
"Flynn demonstrates that he truly understands the psyche of
the enemy.... Really y, so realistic." " -- BOOKREPORTER.COM"
"Fantastic." -- GLENN BECK
Read more ( javascript:void(0) )
About the Author
----------------
#1 New York Times bestselling author Vince Flynn
(1966–2013) created one of contemporary fiction’s most popular
heroes: CIA counterterrorist agent Mitch Rapp, featured in
thirteen of Flynn’s accled political thrillers. All of his
novels are New York Times bestsellers, including his stand-alone
debut novel, Term Limits.
Read more ( javascript:void(0) )
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
--------------------------------------------------------
Pursuit of Honor
-------------
1
NEW YORK CITY
-------------
It was nearing ten o’clock in the evening when Mitch Rapp decided
it was time to move. He stepped from the sedan into the April
night, popped his umbrella, clutched the collar of his black
trench coat, and set out across a rain-soaked East Twentieth
Street. He navigated the puddles and swollen gutter without
complaint. The weather was a blessing. Not only did it clear the
streets of potential witnesses, it also gave him a reasonable
excuse to hide his face from the city’s ever-increasing array of
security cameras.
Rapp had traveled to New York City to decide the e of a man.
At an earlier point, he had debated the wisdom of handling the
situation himself. In addition to the inherent risk of getting
caught, there was another, more pressing problem. Just six days
earlier a series of explosions had torn through Washington, D.C.,
killing 185 and wounding hundreds. Three of the terrorists were
still at large, and Rapp had been ordered, unofficially, to find
them by any means necessary. So far, however, the investigation
had been painfully complicated and had yet to yield a single
solid lead. The three men had up and disappeared, which suggested
a level of sophistication that few of them had thought the enemy
capable of. The last thing Rapp expected, though, was that he
would still be dealing with this other issue. In light of the
attacks in Washington, he thought the fool would have come to his
senses.
Beyond the significance of deciding if the man should live or
die, there was the aftermath to consider. Killing him had the
very real potential to cause more problems than it would solve.
If the guy failed to show up for work there would be a lot of
questions, and the majority of them would be directed at Rapp and
his boss, Irene Kennedy, the director of the Central Intelligence
Agency. One tiny misstep, and the shit storm of all shit storms
would be brought down on them.
The head of the surveillance team had tried to talk him out of
it, but Rapp wasn’t the kind of man who was going to start
pulling the trigger from a climate-controlled office a couple
hundred miles away. He needed to see with his own eyes if they
were missing something—if there wasn’t some unseen or
unpredictable factor that had caused the bureaucrat to jump the
tracks. Rapp was keenly aware of the universal disdain for the
man he had followed to New York. There were plenty of people on
the clandestine side of the business who had cause to wish the
prick dead, and that was another reason Rapp needed to be
absolutely certain he was guilty of what they suspected. His
dislike for the man would make it all that much easier to pull
the trigger, and Rapp knew he had to fight that urge. He needed
to give this idiot every last chance to save himself before they
did something that could never be undone.
It would be a mistake to read too deeply into Rapp’s cautious
attitude, though. If he found the proof he was looking for, there
would be no hand-wringing or queasiness. He’d killed too many
people to begin acting like an amateur, and although the man was
a fellow American, he was also very likely a traitor. And not
some low-level, paper-pushing traitor, this guy had one of the
highest security clearances in the federal government and his
hypocrisy had likely gotten one of Rapp’s agents killed.
Rapp moved down the sidewalk toward Park Avenue at a casual pace.
He was dressed in a fashion similar to that of the thousand-plus
executive car drivers who were shuffling their clients around the
city on this rain-soaked evening—black shoes, black suit, white
shirt, black tie, and a black trench coat. To anyone who happened
to notice him, he would look like just another driver out
stretching his legs, trying to kill a little time before his
client finished his meal and was ready to head someplace else or
call it a night.
As Rapp took up a position across the street and one door down
from the Gramercy Tavern, he reached into his pocket and fished
out a pack of Marlboros. Standing in the rain in New York City
doing nothing might get you noticed, but throw in a and
you looked like all the other addicts battling the elements to
get their fix. Rapp turned away from the street and faced the
blank façade of the building behind him. He tilted the umbrella
so it looked as if he was trying to block the wind and flicked
his lighter. He was not worried about the wind, but he was
worried about one of the other drivers’ catching a glimpse of his
face in the glow of the flame.
After a deep pull off the , Rapp casually looked out
from under the rain-soaked umbrella and across the street. The
target was sitting in one of the restaurant’s big windows sharing
a meal, a lot of booze, and too much conversation with a man Rapp
had never met, and hoped to keep that way. The other man was a
concern, to be sure, but Rapp was not in the habit of killing
private citizens simply because they were witnesses to the
ramblings of a bitter man who was past his prime.
Despite every effort to find a different solution, Rapp’s mood
was decidedly alistic. The surveillance team had the
restaurant wired for sound, and for the last two hours he had
been sitting in a parked Lincoln Town Car listening to his
coworker t-talk the Agency. As Rapp watched him take a drink
of wine, he wasn’t sure what bothered him more, the man’s
self-serving criticism, or his reckless behavior. One would think
that anyone who worked at the CIA would be a little more careful
about when and where he decided to commit treason.
So far his associate had done little more than espouse his
political and philosophical views. Bad form, to be sure, but
nothing that had risen to the level of outright sedition. Rapp,
however, could sense that it was coming. The man had been
drinking heavily. He’d downed two gin martinis and four glasses
of red wine, and that wasn’t counting the bump or two he’d
probably had on the flight up from D.C. and possibly at the hotel
bar. Rapp had ordered his surveillance people to steer clear of
the airports. There were too many cameras and trained law
types who would eventually be interviewed by the FBI.
If the night went the way it was looking, every moment of this
guy’s life would be rewound and scrutinized, and they’d start
with that U.S. Airways commuter flight he’d taken out of Reagan
National up to LaGuardia earlier in the day.
Rapp casually took another drag from the and watched as
the waiter placed two snifters of cognac in front of the men. A
few minutes earlier, Rapp had listened as the other man tried to
pass on the after-dinner drink. Rapp got the feeling the man was
starting to think the dinner meeting had been a waste of his
time. Rapp’s coworker, however, insisted that they both have a
drink. He told the other man he was going to need it after he
heard what he was about to tell him.
Now, with the rain softly pelting his umbrella, Rapp watched the
waiter place two snifters on the table. The waiter was still
within ear when the man from Langley leaned in and began to
tell his story. Rapp heard every word via a wireless earpiece.
For the first few minutes it was all innuendo. Rapp’s coworker
put his information on the table in a series of hypotheticals,
and while Rapp had no doubt that the lawyers at the Justice
Department would have found wiggle room in the statements, Rapp
saw them as further proof of the man’s reckless intent. Anyone
who had been read in at this level of national security knew what
could be discussed and what was strictly off limits.
Rapp was in the midst of lighting his second when the
conversation moved from the abstract to the concrete. It started
with the specific mention of an operation that was known to only
a handful of people, including the president. This is it, he
thought to himself. The idiot is really going to do it.
As casually as he could, Rapp brought his eyes back to the big
window of the restaurant. There, the two men sat, hunched over
the table, their faces no more than a foot apart, one speaking in
hushed tones, the other looking more horrified with each word.
The classified designations came pouring out in a rapid-fire
staccato of dates and targets. One secret after another was
tossed onto the pile as if they were inconsequential nuggets of
gossip. The breadth of the damage was even worse than Rapp had
dared imagine. So bad, in fact, that he began wondering if he
shouldn’t simply march across the street, pull out his , and
execute the idiot on the spot.
As quickly as things had heated up, though, they came to an
abrupt halt. Like some belligerent drunk who’d consumed one ounce
too much of alcohol, the man from Langley put away his wares and
announced that he’d divulged only a fraction of what he knew and
that before he said anything further they needed to come to an
agreement.
Up until now, Rapp had thought his coworker’s rigid principles
had driven him to take this risky step, but as he listened to the
two men discuss the financial details of their new relationship,
that last shred of grudging respect vanished. Rapp looked through
the rain at the traitor and realized that like the hundreds of
miscreants who had gone before him, his coworker’s often-flaunted
idealism came with a price, just as with all the other bastards.
Rapp flicked his into the gutter and watched it bob and
swirl its way into the sewer. As he turned toward Park Avenue he
felt not even the tiniest bit of remorse over what he had just
set in motion. Without having to look, he knew that a man bearing
a striking resemblance to the traitor was now climbing into the
back of a Lincoln Town Car. Every detail had been arranged from
the eyeglasses, to the tie, to the hair color—even the black and
orange umbrella from the hotel. All that was left for Rapp to do
was walk a block and a half and wait for the idiot to come to
him.
Read more ( javascript:void(0) )