Oath of Loyalty (Mitch Rapp #21)(3)

“And Cook’s going to fix all that.”

“I think he has a better shot than most,” Nash responded. “He doesn’t have any illusions about humanity. He knows that ninety-five percent of people are going to fight tooth and nail against the utopia that all these tech gurus like Nicholas Ward want to force on them. And more important, he understands that they’ll drag the other five percent down with them. Cook just wants to give people the leadership they need. He wants to make their lives simple. Focus their energy. Give them something to belong to.”

“And that other five percent? I assume they get what they want, too?”

“Yeah. Wealth, power, and a nice tall wall between us and them.”

“What a beautiful vision.”

Nash let out a bitter laugh. “My entire career has been about fighting for America and the American dream, Mitch. But, at some point, it’s time to wake up. At some point, you’ve got to admit that the monkeys are going to figure out a reason to throw feces at each other. The question is how much of it are you willing to let stick to you. I’ve spent my entire life trying to save people who don’t want to be saved. Now it’s time for me to save myself and my family. Twenty years from now, I want my kids to be kicking back in penthouses, not scrounging for scraps and killing each other over every conspiracy theory that comes across Facebook. The job’s not stopping al-Qaeda from taking out a few people here and there. Not anymore. Now it’s about stopping the mob from destroying themselves and everything people like us have built.”

Rapp nodded and looked around at the men holding their weapons on him. “So, what’s the plan, Mike? I don’t have all day.”

“The plan…” Nash looked down at the pistol in his hand. “The plan is to clean up as much of your mess as I can.”

“My mess?”

“Yeah. Your mess. You made everyone believe that Ward and his people are dead, and they need to stay that way. If they get resurrected, it’s going to be inconvenient to a lot of people who don’t like being inconvenienced. I assume you’ve got them stashed somewhere around here with Scott? Tell me where. I’ll drive over, have a couple of beers with the guys, and then tonight I’ll take care of the problem and drive out before anyone knows what happened. After that, if everyone agrees to keep their mouths shut, they can just walk away.”

“And Irene?”

“I can protect her. Cook will make me the new director and he doesn’t have any reason to pick a fight. All she has to do is fade into retirement.” He paused for a moment, finally pointing an accusatory finger at Rapp. “Like always, the problem is you. You’re the part of this shit sandwich everyone’s going to choke on.”

“And that’s why I’ll never leave here.”

“I don’t know. Maybe you do. How about I offer you the deal of the fucking century? You give me your word right now that you’ll just let this go. That you’ll forget about me, the Cooks, the Saudis, Ward, and all the rest. That you’ll go back to the Cape, race your bike, spend time with your new family, and never set foot back in the US. Do that and I’ll give you a ride to the airport.”

Rapp remained silent.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought,” Nash said, shaking his head slowly. “But I want to tell you something. I’m going to make you a hero. All the shit you’ve done that no one knows about? I’m going to tell them. You deserve that.”

Rapp walked to a rock outcropping, tracked by the men covering him. He sat and rested his elbows on his knees. “I got an interesting text on the way here.”

“I meant to ask you about that.”

“Like I told you, Ward’s people are still a few weeks out from putting names to the network of burners you were using. But he has put together some of the towers they connected to.”

“So?”

“So, he noticed something interesting. That one of those phones connected twice to the same tower I do when I’m at home in Virginia.”

Nash’s brow furrowed as he tried to make sense of what he’d just heard. Rapp decided to help him out.

“Apparently, Nick Ward’s memory is better than mine. I don’t recall telling him that the man I was meeting today lived in my neighborhood. But he did.”

“I don’t understand,” Nash said, backing away a few more steps and glancing at his backup to make sure they were all still in position.

“I didn’t, either. The video from Irene telling me to meet her in the middle of nowhere. The old password from Belarus that anyone high up enough in the Agency could get hold of. The mole who was too smart for anyone to identify. But then the cell tower put it all together for me.”

This time when Nash looked at the men covering Rapp, he did so with the intensity of someone who realized something had gone very wrong. It took only a moment before his body language revealed that he’d figured out what that thing was. It was already over when the men removed their goggles and face coverings.

Nash looked away before he could meet Scott Coleman’s eye. Understandable in that Coleman was probably his best friend in the world. Joe Maslick and Bruno McGraw—also present—rated pretty high, too.

“What did you find in the forest?” Rapp asked.

“Seven mercs,” Coleman said.