The Third Option   ::   Flynn Vince

After intense debate by President Hayes, Director Stansfield of the CIA, and General Flood, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the three had decided they had little choice but to go after Saddam on a covert level. At its core, that's what this meeting was all about.

President Hayes leaned forward and placed his coffee mug on the table. He was eager to hear Rapp's take on the situation in Germany. Hayes had discovered that where others failed, Rapp had a way of making things happen. «What does Mitch think?»

«He thinks that given the short notice and the security around the target, we would be better off opting for a more direct approach.» Kennedy went on to give the president a brief overview of the plan.

When she was finished Hayes sat back and folded his arms across his chest, his expression thoughtful. Kennedy watched him and kept her own expression neutral, just as her boss would do.

Hayes mulled things over for another ten seconds and then said, «What if they did it..:» The president stopped because Kennedy was already shaking her head.

«Mitch doesn't respond well to advice given from three thousand miles away.»

The president nodded. After the White House incident the previous spring, Hayes had read up on Rapp. It was almost always his way or the highway, and while this could be a concern, one could hardly argue with the man's record of success. He had a history of getting the job done, often when no one else even dared to take it. Hayes suppressed his urge to be an armchair quarterback and instead decided to remind Kennedy of what was at stake.

«Do Mitch and the others know they are on their own?»

Kennedy nodded. «I mean really on their own. If anything goes wrong, we will deny any knowledge of the situation and of who they are. We have to. Our relationship with Germany could not withstand something like this, nor, for that matter, could my presidency.»

Kennedy nodded understandingly. «Sir, Mitch is good. He'll have all of his backups in place by this evening, and if things get too tight, he knows not to force it.»

The president stared at her for a moment and then nodded. «All right. You have my authority to go ahead with this, but you know where we stand, Irene. If it blows up, we never had this meeting, and we didn't have the five or six meetings before, either. You had no knowledge of these events, and neither did anyone else at the Agency.» Hayes shook his head. «I hate to do this to Mitch, but there's no choice. He is way out there working without a net, and if he falls, we can't do a thing to help him.»



2

Rapp had taken a five-mile run around noon, but other than that he had stayed in the cottage the entire day. He needed the jog to stay loose, to take the edge off of all the coffee he had consumed. He had communicated directly with Irene Kennedy several times via a STU III, MX3030 Comsat. The voice-secure satellite phone was his only direct link to Washington. No one else knew he and the Hoffmans were in Germany, and no one could. If the mission went off without a hitch, his masters would need complete deniability, and if the mission fell apart, they would need it even more.

Rapp's plan for the evening had required certain purchases. Earlier in the day Tom Hoffman had driven into Hamburg with a shopping list. Hoffman had been very careful about where he bought the various items, never buying more than one thing in the same neighborhood and always avoiding store surveillance cameras.

Night had arrived, and Rapp was sitting at the kitchen table with the Hoffmans going over each detail for what seemed like the hundredth time. The Hoffmans were very thorough in this regard. They had come up with a concise tactical operation order, clearly defining the mission down to the last detail. Rapp had worked with enough Special Forces types that he could tell that one or both of them had been with one of the military's elite units.

All notes would be burned before they left the cottage. The primary, secondary, and third radio frequencies all had to be memorized; the same went for the escape and evasion routes, passwords, and codes. Maps could be carried, but no markings could be made on them. All of their fake credentials were placed in flash bags. If things went really wrong, all they had to do was pull a string on the bag and its contents would be incinerated. Weapons were checked, rechecked, and checked again.

Rapp had a hard time putting his finger on it, but he didn't have a good feeling about this one. He reminded himself that there had been a mission early in his career about which he had felt great, and before all was said and done, a dozen U.S. commandos were dead. Ever since then he rarely felt confident about any mission, but there was something unusual that was gnawing at him about this one. Rapp could sense that he was losing a little bit of his edge.

He had been an angry man for so many years, and he had always used that anger to sharpen his focus. That anger was born in the aftermath of the Pan Am Lockerbie disaster. At the time, Rapp was attending Syracuse University. Thirty-five of his fellow students had died in the terrorist attack, and one of them was his girlfriend. During this period of intense grieving, Rapp was approached by the CIA. The Agency had dangled the prospect of revenge in Rapp's face, and he had jumped. The target of that revenge became Rafique Aziz, the person behind the terrorist attack on Pan Am Flight 103.

Rapp had spent the last decade hunting the terrorist and had finally come face to face with him the previous spring. Aziz was now dead, and the anger was gone. It had been replaced with something very different – an emotion Rapp didn't know he could still feel. Anna Rielly was now his focus, and what he felt for her was the opposite of hatred. She was one in a million. The type of woman who made you want to be a better man, and Rapp desperately wanted to be a better man. He wanted to put his life with the CIA behind him and move on.

Jane Hoffman removed her headphones and announced, «The first guests have arrived.»

Rapp looked at his watch. It was five minutes to eight, about two and a halfhours before show time. It was time to check in with Kennedy one more time. Rap grabbed the COMSAT mobile phone by the handle and carried it to the bedroom.

IF DR. IRENE Kennedy had bothered to look out me window of her seventh-floor office, she would have noticed that the fall colors of the Potomac River Valley were at their peak. Unfortunately, there hadn't been much time of late to stop and take in life's little pleasures. Langley was on shaky ground – under assault from both external and internal forces. Word had leaked that Thomas Stansfield, the director of the CIA, was in poor health.