“She’ll object to not being in the loop and privately criticize the details of the operation, but that’s all. She doesn’t believe Chism is alive any more than we do, and she knows her job is hanging on by a thread.”

“Maybe it’s time to cut that thread. Keeping her on has played well up to this point, but she’s dangerous. You’d have to be an idiot to think she didn’t have something to do with Christine Barnett’s suicide. And if she’d do it to her, she’ll do it to me.”

Christine Barnett had been his party’s leader before her sudden and very unexpected death. While he owed his presidency to the fact that she was now rotting away in her mausoleum, the path she’d taken there was well beyond suspicious.

“There’s no evidence of that at all, Tony.”

“Come on. There’s no way that arrogant bitch offed herself. She thought she was the second coming of Jesus. Kennedy found the skeletons in her closet and quietly did away with her before she could get her hands on the Oval Office. The problem is that we’ve got a few skeletons, too, and in order to keep hold of the White House we’re going to be collecting more. I don’t want to spend my life looking over my shoulder for Irene Kennedy.”

“I agree that she was probably involved in Christine’s death and that she has to go. But I don’t see this as a pressing issue. Kennedy still has a lot of support on both sides of the aisle and the longer she stays, the less political it will look when we put her out to pasture.”

“What about Mitch Rapp?”

“Obviously, he has the potential to be a powerful tool. And he’s a simpler creature than Kennedy. He wears his motivations on his sleeve—love of country, loyalty to his comrades. He still sees America as a shining tower on a hill. Those kinds of delusions are easily manipulated.”

“You’re underestimating him, Cathy.”

“Not at all. I’m just thinking out loud. In any event, I’m anxious to be introduced. If nothing else, it’ll be interesting to look into the eyes of a man like him.”

2

SOUTHWESTERN VIRGINIA

USA

“BEYOND the laser, the system uses downrange drones to measure wind, humidity, temperature variations, and such. They do all the work and then signal the rifle. We kept the trigger, though. For you old-school guys.”

Mitch Rapp frowned and glanced at the man in his peripheral vision. A soldier on loan to DARPA, he looked impossibly young. The kind of kid who would just stare blankly if anyone mentioned a fax machine or that phones were once attached to walls. The world seemed to be transforming into a place where anyone over eighteen had one foot in the nursing home.