Lethal Agent (Mitch Rapp #18)
Vince Flynn, & Kyle Mills
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sitting alone in your basement all year can make producing a book seem like a solo effort. Nothing could be further from the truth. Thankfully, I’ve managed to fall in with a good crowd.
Emily Bestler and Sloan Harris were always there for Vince and they’ve been every bit as supportive of me. Lara Jones keeps me on track. Simon Lipskar and Celia Taylor Mobley keep me from getting tangled in the complex web I’ve created over the last twenty years. David Brown leaves no marketing stone unturned. Ryan Steck props me up with his enthusiasm and unparalleled knowledge of the Rappverse. My mother and wife are my first editorial stop, providing early criticism and ideas. Rod Gregg has become a recurring character—making sure I don’t make any fatal firearms errors.
Without all of you, I’d just be staring at a blank computer screen . . .
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In Transfer of Power, Vince wrote that he intentionally omitted details relating to the White House and Secret Service. I find myself in a similar position with Lethal Agent.
Because of the sensitivity of border security at the time of writing, I’ve kept the details of crossings vague. Further, I either omitted or obscured the details of anthrax production.
PRELUDE
NORTHERN IRAQ
THE cave was more than ten meters square, illuminated with a handful of battery-powered work lights. The glare and heat from them was centered on two rows of men kneeling on colorful cushions. Armed guards lurked near the jagged walls, barely visible in the shadows.
Mullah Sayid Halabi sat cross-legged, gazing down from a natural stone platform. Most of the men lined up in front of him were in their middle years—former junior officers from Saddam Hussein’s disbanded army. Their commanders had been either captured or killed over the years, but these simpler soldiers were in many ways more useful. Their superiors had left the details of war to them while they focused on the much more critical activity of currying favor with Hussein.
The prior leader of ISIS had recruited these men in an effort to turn his motivated but undisciplined forces into an army capable of holding and administering territory. After his death in a drone strike, Halabi had taken over the organization with a much more ambitious goal: building a military capacity that could stand against even the Americans. Unfortunately, it was proving to be an infuriating, slow, and expensive process.
His men, generally prone to bickering and loud displays of fealty, had fallen silent in order to contemplate the rhythm of approaching footsteps. Halabi did the same, turning his attention to an inky black tunnel in the wall facing him. A few moments later, Aali Nassar appeared.
His expensive clothing was torn and covered in the dust that made up this part of Iraq. His physical suffering was admirably absent from his expression but evident in both his posture and the broken section of collarbone pressing against the luxurious cotton of his shirt.
Only hours ago, he had been the highly respected and greatly feared director of Saudi intelligence. A man who had never failed to prove himself—first in the Saudi Special Forces and then during his meteoric rise through the ranks of his country’s intelligence apparatus. He had the ear of the king, a devoted family, and a lifestyle marked by privilege and power.
But now all that was gone. His plot to overthrow the Saudi royalty had been discovered and he’d been forced to flee the country. The great Aali Nassar was now alone, injured, and standing in a cave with nothing more than the clothes on his back and the contents of his pockets. It was the latter that he hoped to exchange for protection and a position in the ISIS hierarchy.
“Welcome, Aali,” Halabi said finally. “I trust your journey wasn’t too uncomfortable.”
“Not at all,” he said, revealing only a hint of the pain that speaking caused him.
“I understand that you have something for me?”
The thumb drive Nassar was carrying had been discovered when he’d been searched for tracking devices in Mecca. He’d been allowed to keep it and now retrieved it from his pocket. When he stepped forward to hand it to Halabi, the men at the edges of the cave stirred.
“Don’t give it to me.” The ISIS leader pointed at a man to Nassar’s right. “Give it to him.”
He did as he was told and the man slipped the drive into a laptop.
“It’s asking for a password.”
“Of course it is,” Halabi said. “But I suspect that Director Nassar will be reluctant to give us that password.”
Prior to his escape from Saudi Arabia, Nassar had downloaded an enormous amount of information on that country’s security operations, government officials, and clandestine financial dealings.
“The intelligence and bank account information on that drive are yours,” Nassar said.
Halabi smiled. “A meaningless response. Perhaps politics was your true calling.”
“Perhaps.”
“Can we break his encryption?” Halabi asked.
His very capable technological advisor shook his head. “Unlikely. Torturing him for it would have a higher probability of success.”
“I wonder,” Halabi said thoughtfully. “It seems likely that there’s a password that would put the information forever out of our reach. Isn’t that so, Aali?”