Lethal Agent (Mitch Rapp #18)(51)

“What about the cartel they work for?”

“Lacandon. Do you know anything about it?”

“Of course.”

It was to be expected. She’d made extensive contacts in the underworld during her time working with her husband in the private contracting business.

“Don’t keep me in suspense.”

“It’s operated by Carlos Esparza.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Years ago when he was still an up-and-coming trafficker, one of his competitors tried to hire my husband to deal with him.”

“He didn’t take the job?”

“No. Even by cartel standards Esparza is extremely violent and volatile. He’s also smart and obsessed with security. I was struggling to even locate him, let alone get enough information to plan a successful hit.”

“So you decided the risk and amount of work weren’t worth the reward?”

“We probably would have come to that conclusion. But about a month into our initial legwork, Esparza caught up with our client.”

“And?”

“Our best information was that he tortured him and his family for months and then ground them up and fed them to his men.”

“Outstanding.”

“He’s our nightmare scenario, Mitch. Some cartel leaders get where they are because they’re careful and methodical. He’s the opposite. His success is based on the fact that he’s unpredictable and brutal. The smaller operations are afraid of him and the larger ones don’t think it’s worth going to war with him. And he’s greedy to the point of self-destructiveness. He wants to run the biggest cartel in the world. Be the richest and most powerful man in the world. Based on my research into him, nothing will ever be enough.”

“Okay. Get me whatever updated information on him you can.”

“Mitch . . . This isn’t going to work. The plan you’ve come up with isn’t a plan. It’s—”

“If you have any better ideas, I’m listening.”

“You know my answer to that.”

“I’m not walking away, Claudia. But you’re free to. Anytime you want.”

“You say that so often, sometimes I wonder if it’s what you want,” she said coldly.

He considered his next words more carefully than he would have thought given his current situation. “It’s not what I want. But I understand what I’m dragging you into here. You like to control things, and this isn’t that kind of an operation. If it goes to shit, I don’t want it to blow back on you and I don’t want to leave you thinking it was something you did or didn’t do.”

She was silent for long enough that he started to wonder if they’d been disconnected. Finally, she responded.

“I don’t want to be involved. I admit that. But I’m not going to trust your life to someone else. There’s no room for error here, Mitch. Nothing can go wrong. Not one thing.”

And yet something always did.

“Where do you stand on your end?” he said, changing the subject.

“I spoke with your brother. He said he can bankrupt you and involve you in as many illegal financial schemes as you like.”

“Will it look real?”

“He says yes, but he asked me to tell you that you’re an idiot, suicidal, and that whatever you think you owe to America, you’ve already paid back a hundred times over.”

“But he’ll do it?”

“He said he’d handle all the arrangements personally.”

Rapp nodded. Steven was a financial genius who hadn’t made a mathematical error since he was seven years old. And as an added bonus, he liked his big brother and would be disappointed to see him made into hamburger patties.

“Mitch, I still think we should bring Irene in on this. With her power and experience we could be much more thorough.”

“No. She’d shut us down the minute she heard the plan. And even if she didn’t, she’d be obligated to tell the president. With everything that’s going on in Washington, I don’t trust him. We’ll hold her in reserve. Nothing we do is going to fool her. She’ll know what’s going on and she’ll be there for us if we need her.”

“What about Scott and his men? We need them to get talk going in the spec ops rumor mill.”

“No problem. Tell them whatever you need to.”

Coleman and his boys were one hundred percent loyal and none of them gave a flying fuck about what was going on in Washington. They’d gun down everyone in Congress before they left him hanging.

“Even if everything goes right, Mitch . . .” Her voice faltered.

“It’ll be fine. All I have to do is be convincing.”

When she came back on she spoke so softly he could barely make out her words. “Not too convincing, though, right, Mitch? Not too convincing.”





CHAPTER 24


THE CAPITOL COMPLEX

WASHINGTON, D.C.

USA

“IF I didn’t know better, I’d think there was a god,” Senator Christine Barnett said.

Her campaign manager looked up at her with a deep frown.

“What?” she said.

“I’ve warned you about this before, Senator. . . . If you ever slip and someone records you—”