The Last Man (ARC) (bad conversion)

326 Pages·2005·1.24 MB·English

by  Flynn Vince

S
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EGalley Disclaimer REV 1P.indd 1 10/16/09 3:27 PM An invaluable CIA asset has gone
missing, and with him, secrets that in the wrong hands could prove
disastrous. The only question is can Mitch Rapp find him first?
Joe Rickman, head of CIA clandestine operations in Afghanistan, has been
kidnapped and his four bodyguards executed in cold blood. But Mitch Rapp’s
experience and nose for the truth makes him wonder if something even more
sinister isn’t afoot. Irene Kennedy, director of the CIA, has dispatched him to
Afghanistan to find Rickman at all costs.
Rapp, however, isn’t the only one looking for Rickman. The FBI is too, and
it quickly becomes apparent that they’re less concerned with finding Rickman
than placing the blame on Rapp. With CIA operations in crisis, Rapp must be as
ruthless and deceitful as his enemies if he has any hope of finding Rickman and
completing his mission. But with elements within his own government working
against both him and American interests, will Rapp be stopped dead before he
can succeed?
Vince Flynn is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of thirteen
previous thrillers, including most recently Kill Shot and American Assassin. He
lives in the Twin Cities with his wife and three children. Visit his website at
www.vinceflynn.com.
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Copyright © 2012 by Vince Flynn. Uncorrected proof. Not for sale. Please do not quote for publication
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The LasT Man
Also by Vince Flynn
Kill Shot
American Assassin Pursuit of Honor Extreme Measures Protect and Defend Act
of Treason Consent to Kill Memorial Day Executive Power Separation of Power
The Third Option Transfer of Power Term Limits
The
LasT Man
An AmericAn AssAssin Thriller
Vince FLynn
Emily B Estl Er Books
Atri A
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The Last Man_BGs.indd 6 9/21/12 4:18 PM
To all of my teachers and coaches at Saint Thomas Academy who taught me
that to succeed in life, you need to raise the bar, not lower it
acknowLedgMenTs
T
o my agent and friend Sloan Harris, for another smooth contract negotiation;
you always come through. To Kristyn Keene at ICM, congrats on your
promotion, and to Shira Schindel, who will be taking over for everyone’s
favorite assistant. To Chris Silbermann, for a stellar job negotiating the
extension with CBS Films. To Lorenzo Di Bonaventura and Nick Wechsler, for
inching the movie ever closer to reality. I wish I had your patience.
To my editor and publisher, Emily Bestler, for fifteen years of a great
partnership and more to come. To Kate Cetrulo and Caroline Porter at Emily
Bestler Books, for taking care of all the details I miss and gently reminding me
that I need to hand in my homework. To Jeanne Lee, you never disappoint.
Thanks for another great cover. To Al Madocs, my goal is that one of these years
I will not have to put you in the acknowledgments, but for now, I’m sorry, yet
again, for putting you through the wringer. To David Brown, of all the people I
work with, no one makes me laugh more. You are a joy to work with, and so is
Ariele Fredman, who we all know really runs the department. To Judith Curr and
Louise Burke, thank you for all your continued
x acknowLedgMenTs
support. To Carolyn Reidy, for one of the smoothest, most businessminded
contract negotiations that I have ever been involved in. It is an honor to still be
part of the Simon & Schuster family after fifteen years.
Thanks to a lot of prayers and great medical care, I’m feeling better than I’ve
felt in years. To all the friends and family in the Twin Cities and beyond who
have continued to support my family through prayers, well wishes, and great
kindness, I am humbled. To Dr. Bill Utz and Dr. Eugene Kwon and the amazing
people you work with—cancer sucks, but somehow you make the journey
enjoyable. To Dr. Douglas Olson, my radiologist, you are in my prayers every
day. To my friend Dr. Mike Nanne, I am in awe of your courage.
To my darling wife, Lysa, who has always been wise beyond her years,
thank you for giving me some of that wisdom when I really needed it. Now if I
could just get some of that grace from you, I’d really have things moving in the
right direction. You are my favorite thing about life.
The LasT Man Chapter 1
JaLaLabad, aFghanisTan
T
he four dead men were lined up on the living room floor of the safe house.
Mitch Rapp started with the one on the left. The bearded face, the dark, lifeless
eyes, and the dime-sized bullet hole that marked the center of the man’s forehead
were all expected. One bullet, nice and neat—the way Rapp would have done it.
The next two bodyguards looked the same, including red pucker marks in the
center of their brows. The fourth Afghani was a different story. He’d been shot
through the back of the head. A quarter of his face was now a jagged crater of
flesh, blood, and bone. The exit wound told him the man had been shot by
something a lot bigger than a 9mm—probably a .45 caliber with ammunition
that pancaked and tumbled for maximum damage. There was nothing about this
mess to give Rapp any assurance that things would be fine, but this last little
twist cracked open the door on something he did not want to consider.
Rapp set the troubling thought aside for a second, tried to imagine how it had
gone down. The early signs pointed toward a well-coordinated assault. The
perimeter security had been breached; phone line, cameras, motion sensors, heat
sensors, and even the pressure pads had all been taken off line. The backup
connection through the satellite dish on the roof had also been disabled.
Whoever had attacked the safe house had the knowledge and skill to hit the place
without setting off a single alarm and alerting the quick-reaction force less than a
mile away at the air base. According to the experts at Langley this was never
supposed to happen. Four years earlier they had claimed the safe house was
impregnable against any threat that the Taliban or any other local group could
come up with. Rapp had told those same experts that they were full of shit. He’d
never seen an impregnable safe house for the simple reason that people had to
come and go.
As with most CIA safe houses, this one was intentionally bland. There was
no American flag flown out front and there were no snappy Marines standing
post at the main gate. This was a black site where the more unpleasant aspects of
the war had been coordinated. Langley didn’t want any official records of the
comings and goings of the drug dealers, warlords, arms dealers, local politicians,
police, and Afghan Army officers who were on the take.
The house looked like your run-of-the-mill two-story blockhouse in
Jalalabad. There were quite a few upgrades that made it unique, but from the
outside it looked dingy and run-down just like all the other houses in the
neighborhood. The cinderblock wall that surrounded the property was coated
with a special resin designed to prevent it from exploding into a million pieces
and shredding the house in the event of a car bomb. The simple-looking front
door contained a one-inch steel plate and a reinforced steel frame. All of the
windows were bulletproof Plexiglas and the high-tech security cameras and
sensors were concealed so as to not attract the attention of the neighbors.
Langley had even taken the unusual precaution of buying the houses on each
side and moving in the bodyguards and their families. All to protect one man.
Joe Rickman was the most cunning and brilliant operative Rapp had ever
worked with. They’d known each other for sixteen years. At first Rapp didn’t
know what to think of him. Rickman was pure vanilla. There wasn’t a single
physical characteristic about him that was memorable. At five-feet-ten he was
neither tall nor short. His mousy brown hair matched his dull brown eyes, and
his weak chin completed the bland lines of his roundish face. On the rare
occasion that you heard him speak, he was never animated and his voice was
pure monotone—the kind of thing that could put the most restless baby to sleep.
Rickman’s forgetable face allowed him to blend in and those who met him
were almost underwhelmed by his presence. For Rickman that was just fine.
Much of his success was built on fools underestimating him. He’d worked for
the CIA for twenty-three years and it was rumored that he had never set foot
inside headquarters. Only a few months earlier Rapp had asked him if the rumor
was true. Rickman responded with a soft smile and said that he’d never been
invited.
At the time, Rapp took the comment as a self-deprecating attempt at a little
levity. Later he realized Rickman was dead serious. Rickman was one of those
people who were tolerated only during tough times— usually war. For the last
eight years he’d run America’s clandestine war in Afghanistan. More than a
billion dollars in cash had passed through his hands. Most of it was used to bribe
people into playing on the right team, but a fair amount of the money was used
to kill enemies and for a laundry list of other unpleasant things that went with
the territory. People back at Langley didn’t want to know what Rickman was up
to. They only wanted results, and that was something Rickman was exceedingly
good at. Underneath Rickman’s bland façade was a cunning mind that was
perfectly suited to the duplicitous, infinitely complicated world of espionage.