Vince Flynn - The Thid Option

THIRD OPTION

Vince Flynn

There exists in America a silent and invisible order made up offormer soldiers, intelligence officers, and diplomats. In Washington , they areeverywhere and they are nowhere. The average person never sees them, neverpauses to think about them, never notices the hand they may have had in aseemingly ordinary death. Most people never stop to think twice about the drugoverdose of a lobbyist reported on page B-2 of the Washington Posts Metrosection, or the suicide of a colonel in the United States Army, or the fatalmugging of a White House staffer.

Average Americans are too busy living their lives to look beyondthe headlines and wonder what secrets these people may have taken to theirgraves. Among those in the know, eyebrows are raised and even a few quietquestions asked, but ultimately a blind eye is turned, and life goes on. Toseek answers from this dark community is a very Dangerous thing. It is theworld of covert operations, a very real but unseen part of our governmentsforeign and sometimes domestic policy. It is bigger than any one person. It isthe third option, and it is one that is not always used by wise and honorablemen.

Through the darkness the man moved from tree to tree, workinghis way toward the large house. The nineteenth-century estate, forty milessouth of Hamburg , Germany , spanned one hundred and twelve acres of beautifulrolling forest and farmland and was designed after the grand treaties atVersailles in France . It had been commissioned by Hein rich Hagenmiller in1872 to win further favor with William I of Prussia , the newly crowned Germanemperor. Portions of it had been sold off over the years as it became tooexpensive to maintain so much land.

The man walking silently through the woods had already studiedhundreds of photographs of the property and its owner. Some of the photos weresnapped from satellites orbiting the earth thousands of miles up, but most weretaken by the surveillance team that had been in place for the last week.

The assassin had arrived from America only this afternoon andwanted to see with his own eyes what he was up against. Photographs were a goodstart, but they were no substitute for being there in person. The collar of hisblack leather jacket was flipped up around his neck to ward off the bite of thecold fall evening. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees since sunset.

For the second time since leaving the cottage, he stopped deadin his tracks and listened. He thought he had heard something behind him. Thenarrow path he trod was covered with a fresh bed of golden pine needles. It wasa cloudy night, and with the thick canopy above, very little light reached theplace where he stood.

He moved to the paths edge and slowly looked back. Without hisnight-vision scope, he could see no more than ten feet.

Mitch Rapp had been trying not to use the scope. He wanted tomake sure he could find his way down the path without it, but something wastelling him he wasnt alone. Rapp extracted a 9-mm Glock automatic from hispocket and quietly screwed a suppressor onto the end of it. Then he grabbed afour-inch tubular pocket scope, flipped the operating switch on, and held it upto his right eye.

The path before him was instantly illuminated with a strangegreen light. Rapp scanned the area, checking not only the path but his flanks.The pocket scope penetrated the dark shadows that his eyes could not. He paidparticular attention to the base of the trees that bordered the path. He waslooking for the telltale shoe of someone who was seeking to conceal himself.

After five minutes of patiently waiting, Rapp began to wonder ifit wasnt a deer or some other creature that had made the noise. After fivemore minutes, he reluctantly gave in to the conclusion that he had heard ananimal of the four-legged variety rather than two-. Rapp put the pocket scopeaway but decided to keep his gun out. He had not made it to the ripe old age ofthirty-two by being careless and sloppy. Like any true professional, he knewwhen the time was right to take chances and when to cut and run.

Rapp continued down the path for another quarter of a mile. Hecould see the lights of the house up ahead and decided to go the rest of theway through the underbrush. Silently, he maneuvered through the thickets,bending branches out of his way and ducking under others. As he approached theedge of the forest, he heard the snap of a twig under his foot and quicklymoved to his left, placing a tree directly between himself and the house. Akennel of hunting dogs, not more than a hundred yards away, erupted in alarm.Rapp silently swore at himself and remained perfectly still. This was why heneeded to check things out on his own.

Amazingly, no one had told him that there were dogs. The caninesgrew louder, their barks turning to howls, and then a door opened. A deep voiceyelled in German for the beasts to be quiet. The man repeated himself two moretimes, and finally the dogs settled.

Rapp slid an eye out from behind the tree and looked at thekennel. The hunting dogs were wired, pacing back and forth. They would be aproblem. Not as bad as trained guard dogs, but their senses were stillnaturally keen. He stood at the edge of the forest listening and watching,taking everything in. he didnt like what he saw. There was a lot of open spacebetween the forest and the house.

There were some gardens that he could weave his way through, butit would be hard to stay silent on the paths of crushed rock. The dogs wouldmake approaching from the south very difficult. Surveillance cameras coveredthe other avenues, and there was twice the open space to traverse. The onlygood news was that there were no pressure pads, microwave beams, or motionsensors to deal with.

Officially, Mitch Rapp had nothing to do with the U.S. government.

Unofficially, he had been working for the CIA since graduatingfrom Syracuse University more than a decade ago. Rapp had been selected to joina highly secretive counterterrorism group known as the Orion team. The CIA hadhoned Rapps raw athleticism and intelligence into a lethal efficiency. The fewpeople he allowed to get close to him knew him as a successful entrepreneur whohad started a small computer consulting business that required frequent travel.

To keep things legitimate, Rapp often did conduct business whileabroad, but not on this trip.

He had been sent to kill a man. A man who had already beenwarned twice.

Rapp studied the area for almost thirty minutes. When he hadseen enough, he started back, but not down the path. If someone was in thewoods, there was no sense in walking right into a trap. Rapp quietly picked hisway through the underbrush for several hundred yards to the south. He stoppedthree times and checked his compass to make sure he was headed in the rightdirection. From the intelligence summary, he knew there was another footpathdue south of the one he had come in on. Both paths entered the estate from anarrow dirt road and ran roughly parallel to each other.

Rapp almost missed the second footpath. It appeared lessfrequented than the first one and was overgrown. From there he worked his wayback to the curving dirt road. When he reached it, he knelt down and extractedhis pocket scope.

For several minutes he scanned the road and listened. When hewas sure no one else was about, he began walking south.

Rapp had been doing this for almost ten years, and he was readyto get out. In fact, this probably would be his last job. He had met the rightwoman the previous spring, and it was time to settle down. The CIA did not wantto let him go, but that was tough. He had already given enough. Ten years ofdoing what he did for a living was a lifetime. He was lucky to be getting outin one piece and with a marginally sound mind.

A little more than a mile down the road, Rapp came upon a small cottage.The shades were drawn, and smoke drifted from the chimney. He approached thedoor, knocked twice, paused for a second, and then knocked three more times. Itopened two inches, and an eye appeared. When the man saw that it was Rapp, heopened the door all the way. Mitch stepped into the sparsely furnished room andbegan to unbutton his leather jacket. The man who had let him in locked thedoor behind him.