“If all of them are together there, does that provide an opportunity?” President Cook asked.
“For God’s sake, Tony,” Catherine said, but no one seemed to hear.
“At this point, I don’t think so, sir. The security at Ward’s camp is extraordinary. Obviously, we’re capable of taking them out but hiding our involvement would be impossible. A much more viable strategy would be to go after Rapp in Guatemala. He’s eventually going to have to go there and it’s not his normal operating environment. Once he’s in-country, he’ll be vulnerable to our operatives or maybe just to Marroqui. If we leak who he is and his objective to the right government officials, he’s going to find Guatemala a very dangerous place.”
“But even if he manages to kill Marroqui, it’s going to take time,” the president said. “By then, my security upgrades will be in place and we’ll have purged everyone loyal to Rapp and Kennedy from the government.”
“Yes, sir. At that point, we’ll be in a much stronger position.”
Catherine sank a little deeper into the cushion behind her. Hargrave would never concede that security was sufficient. In fact, she wondered if he was really even going to put people in Guatemala. If Mitch Rapp were ever killed, the threat to her husband—and his dependence on Hargrave—would disappear.
CHAPTER 15
SOUTHWESTERN UGANDA WITH her customary efficiency, Claudia had already compiled a shockingly detailed briefing on the criminal organization run by Gustavo Marroqui. Drugs, prostitution, murder for hire, human trafficking, pornography—largely the child variety—and government corruption were only the tip of the iceberg. If it was illegal, Marroqui had his hand in it. He was estimated to be worth a good quarter of a billion dollars, but Rapp wouldn’t be surprised if he still shoplifted in convenience stores.
The Guatemalan’s outfit encompassed no fewer than thirty interrelated street gangs in addition to the more elite group that he surrounded himself with. He’d spent years in a bloody battle for the domination of his country and that was a big part of what had made it the murder capital of the world. Now, though, he’d more or less won. For sure, MS-13 continued to be a significant force, but their territory was being chipped away, leaving them to fight other, even more marginalized gangs for Marroqui’s scraps.
Rapp flipped to the last page of the report and skimmed the rest of its contents. The takeaway was that the situation was worse than he thought. And not by a small amount. Going after Marroqui in Guatemala in some ways would be harder than moving against Anthony Cook in Washington. Assassinating a president would be a clean, sophisticated operation. Professional operators, split-second timing, cutting-edge equipment. Taking down Marroqui on his home turf was something completely different. Most likely a blood-soaked clusterfuck.
He tossed the folder onto the table and couldn’t help allowing a smile to play at his lips. In a tree next to him, a brightly colored bird was singing its heart out. The sky was still cloudless and the temperatures had risen into the low seventies. A breeze was blowing from the north, bringing with it the scent of the rain forest.
Fuck, he felt better.
The weight of what happened in South Africa had been too heavy for even him to carry—something he hadn’t realized until Kennedy lifted it off him. Rapp was still suspicious that the Cooks could be behind what happened, but she’d made a strong case against that theory. While it was certainly possible that Darren Hargrave had discovered Claudia’s true identity and notified Marroqui, it wasn’t the most likely scenario. The truth was that Claudia still used her old contacts in the criminal world from time to time. Obviously, she leaned toward people she trusted, but crooks were crooks. None were particularly reliable partners, and it would take only one slip for it to get out that she was alive.
Despite not being entirely convinced, Rapp was willing to tentatively proceed under the assumption that the timing of this was just an unfortunate coincidence. And if that was the case, then all this was Claudia’s fault. It was something she didn’t seem to see the humor in, but he was enjoying the hell out of it.
In all likelihood, the broken-record conversation Claudia was so tired of having would never have to come up again. What she’d said last time was right. They both had skeletons in their closets and when one inevitably crawled out, they were better off together than apart. The battle at the house had demonstrated their effectiveness as a team in a very visceral way, but it went further than that. With Kennedy out of the Agency and likely looking to pursue a cushy private-sector job, he was cut off from the intelligence and logistic resources he counted on to operate. Claudia’s considerable talents in that realm would go a long way to fill the gap. Conversely, the death of her husband had left her without any reliable operational capability—a void he was highly qualified to fill.