Oath of Loyalty (Mitch Rapp #21)(57)

The night before what was to be her graduation, the director of the program had come into her quarters and violently raped her. He explained that it was an experience that she’d need to be prepared for if she were ever captured. Nasrin and Yasmin, she discovered later, had suffered the same fate.

Despite the humiliation and considerable injuries, all three of them had gotten up that morning, dressed, and made their way to the ceremony that would welcome them into Iran’s most secretive intelligence organization. They’d stood at attention outside their commander’s office for hours before one of his people told them that the program had been canceled and that they’d been reassigned to the typing pool.

The typing pool. Who knew such things even existed in this day and age? Or maybe they didn’t and one had been created especially for them. Because being raped wasn’t sufficiently humiliating.

Sadly for their new commander, his new typists had learned their lessons too well. The last hour of his life had been extraordinarily painful, ending only when she severed his penis and slowly choked him to death with it. After that, it was just a matter of using his computer credentials to transfer money into foreign accounts they’d opened and create safe passage out of the country.

Shortly thereafter, Legion was born.

The trail widened and Cyrah crouched, moving to a vantage point above the clearing where she’d parked her rental car. The guidebook’s warnings about criminal activity turned out to be prescient. Her assumption had been that when the climbing community had abandoned the area, so would the men who made it so undesirable. Never underestimate the persistence of the criminal element. She of all people should have known that.

It appeared that her problem consisted of only two men, both wearing jeans and ragged T-shirts. Both were also wearing flip-flops despite the cool temperatures, but they still looked capable of moving quickly. They’d arrived in a dilapidated white van streaked with rust. Neither seemed to be armed.

As was wise in the area, she’d left the car unlocked and the glove box open to demonstrate that there was nothing in it to steal. Despite this, the two men had decided to perform a thorough search. Not really a problem for her as long as they finished it quickly and moved on. If not, it might become necessary to take action.

Cyrah retrieved a SIG Sauer P226 from her pack and screwed on an Octane 9 silencer. Sighting over it, she tracked one of the men as he started back toward the van. His companion, meanwhile, opened her vehicle’s hood.

There was a deep glow in the cloud layer to the west and hazy shadows were stretching themselves across the clearing. The impending darkness would probably discourage anyone else from coming up there that evening, though it was far from certain. These two had. The question now was, what to do about it?

As was so often the case in life, there were no good options. She could sit there and let the men strip her car, which would inevitably lead to significant contact with the police and endless problems with Avis. Her cover and passport would likely survive additional scrutiny, but it would all be very public, time consuming, and could affect her ability to quickly leave the country if necessary. On the other hand, dealing with the situation in a more aggressive manner involved its own risks and irritations.

Which to choose?

When the man at the van reappeared with a lug wrench in one hand and a box brimming with other tools in the other, she took careful aim and squeezed off a single round. The SIG bucked, and the silencer produced enough sound to make the man hovering over the engine look up. The metallic rattle of his companion dropping the box distracted him and he turned toward the sound. Cyrah waited for him to present an optimal target before squeezing off another round. He immediately crumpled, disappearing behind the front bumper.

It took five minutes of downclimbing to arrive at the clearing and when she did, she winced in the waning light. Both shots were perfect, leaving neat holes dead center of mass in both men. It looked like exactly what it was—the work of an anal-retentive professional assassin. Minimal ammo, minimal mess, maximum efficiency. Force of habit and, in retrospect, not what she was after.

Cyrah emptied her magazine at random into the two men but was still unsatisfied with the effect. She needed to leave absolutely no doubt that this was the result of gang rivalry or a turf war. If someone somehow found evidence of a doe-eyed, dimpled young woman being in the area, the very thought that she might be involved would have to be laughable.

She went to the back of the van and looked at the clutter of car parts, old furniture, and landscaping equipment. A rusty ax was resting on one of the wheel wells and she picked it up, testing the weight of it in her hands. They said that diamonds were a girl’s best friend but in some cases a sharp, heavy blade was just as good.

Cyrah took off her pack and set it down. There was a liter of water in it, still untouched due to the cool temperatures. Plenty for an impromptu, if somewhat frigid, bath. She put a fresh magazine in the gun just in case someone came upon her and then began to strip. When she was completely nude and her clothes were neatly folded on a rock, she picked up the ax and headed for the closest corpse. Something was playing at the back of her mind as she walked. A vague memory from a documentary she’d once watched about an American woman from Victorian times.

What was her name?

It came to her as she stopped in front of the shirtless man and raised the blade. Lizzie Borden. That was it. A formidable woman, ahead of her time.