Oath of Loyalty (Mitch Rapp #21)(95)

“Have you ever thought about why?”

“Why what?” Catherine said.

“Why you’ve spent your life pursuing something that you don’t need? You’re wealthy. You’re powerful. You feel no sense of gratitude to the country that allowed you to succeed in the way you have. You’re completely insulated from the chaos you say you’re so concerned about. Why not just serve your time in the White House and leave like the others before you?”

“Why do you think, Irene?”

“I suspect it’s not complicated. The problem is that it’ll never be enough. In my experience, the more power people like you get, the more you crave. And what good is power unless you wield it in the most visceral way possible? You say you just want to bring order to the mess we’ve made, but you’ll get bored with that pretty quickly. Then you’ll want to grind your heel into people’s throats. To make them kneel.”

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Catherine said.

“Is it that? Or is it that the people who seek it are corrupt by nature?”

Catherine laughed. “Then take my offer, Irene. Be the angel on our shoulder. Use that incredible mind and your decades of experience to manage us. Manipulate us. Maybe even destroy us. What kind of patriot would you be if you sold out your country for one man?”





CHAPTER 47


DAAN VILJOEN GAME PARK

NEAR WINDHOEK

NAMIBIA

RAPP dodged an enormous web containing a softball-sized spider and began climbing a trail to his right. It felt good to be alone in the wilderness again. The crunch of his running shoes against the ground, the scolding beep of his heart rate monitor as he pushed himself too hard. Morning temperatures were holding just below eighty, but it wouldn’t last. At this point, speed was the better part of valor. The small handheld water bottles he’d selected would run dry pretty quickly in the full heat of the day.

He glanced at his watch about halfway up the climb, ignoring the flashing training data in favor of the time. Two more minutes. Probably not a bad idea to find some shade.

It appeared in the form of a concave cliff band to his right. A quick bushwhack through ragged trees and a few more prehistoric arachnids brought him to the base. Rangers had assured him that there were no predators in the park but the acrid stench of urine made him wonder. Yet another reason to make this quick. He pulled a satphone from his pack and installed the battery. At ten a.m. on the dot, it started to vibrate.

“How’s the fishing?” Rapp said, picking up.

“A little slow this morning,” Scott Coleman replied. “But it’ll get better. I’m feeling lucky.”

The former SEAL was floating off the coast of the Greek island he called his second home. Living the good life and offering Rapp an assist with his communications.

The ring of a phone on Coleman’s end became audible, followed by some expected crackling. The call was coming from Irene Kennedy on yet another anonymous satphone. Coleman would pick up, tape the two handsets together, and then put them in a soundproof box—likely his beer cooler. The air gap would add another layer of protection against the NSA using the call to locate Rapp in Namibia. Decades of tracking terrorists had made him an expert on the weaknesses of electronic surveillance. Ironic—and a little bit depressing—that he was relying on the same tricks that al-Qaeda and ISIS used against him.

“Irene?”

“I’m here. Are you doing all right?”

“We’re fine. Can I assume you’ve come up with something?”

“I met with Catherine and she’s agreed to help try to build a better rapport between you and the president.”

“Why would I be interested in that? It didn’t work the first time.”

“Because we’re both going to make the appropriate… let’s say, gestures.”

“When you say ‘we’ does that mean me?”

“Yes.”

“And what are these gestures, exactly?”

“I can get you within striking distance of the president.”

“Really? Where?”

“The White House.”

He laughed as he moved to a better place to watch the approach to his position. What he didn’t need was a cat slinking up on him. The spiders were bad enough. “So, your deal with her is that she’s going to let me into a building full of operators with orders to kill me on sight? I think your negotiating skills are starting to slip, Irene. If you don’t mind, I’ll just stay on vacation for a while and let Legion make my problems disappear.”

“I think you’re downplaying the risk he’s taking, Mitch. There’s a long list of people you’ve killed under conditions that everyone thought were impossible.”

“That may be true, but I don’t have to risk my ass this time. I can just sit by the pool and wait. For once, time’s on my side.”

“So, Cook dies, the vice president serves for a few years with no real mandate, and then Catherine wins the White House.”

“Not a problem for me. And you know why? Because she’s your evil twin. She’s going to calculate that coming after me doesn’t do anything to move the needle in her direction. She’ll be fully locked in on installing herself as a dictator and if the American people allow that, it’s on them. Like I said before, it’s not my job to save them from themselves.”