Chapter 57
HANDS above your head! Now!”
To his credit, the Italian police officer had drawn his weapon with admirable speed and Rapp was now staring at the muzzle.
The black hole felt particularly ominous.
Maybe because it was centered on his face or maybe because it was jiggling like a bowl of jelly. The officer was hopped up on adrenaline, and if his finger was on the trigger instead of the pistol’s frame, Rapp was dangerously close to gaining a third eye.
“Tranquillo,” Rapp said, echoing the refrain that seemed to be the mantra of his Italian trip. “Fai con calma.”
Though they were probably about the same age, Rapp thought the police officer seemed impossibly young.
The threadbare mustache coloring his upper lip did nothing to age his plump, rosy cheeks.
In addition to his baby face, the man’s uniform hung loosely on his small frame as if he were playing dress-up with his dad’s clothes.
His wide blue eyes probably conveyed a sense of perpetual astonishment, but the way they darted between the blanket-shrouded form and Rapp suggested that the man’s terror was real.
He’d probably never drawn his weapon before, or seen a dead body.
He’d certainly never held a suspected killer at gunpoint.
Rapp tilted his head slightly and confirmed his suspicions.
Not only was the kid’s index finger not on the pistol’s slide, but he’d already taken the slack out of the trigger. The pistol was a hairbreadth from firing.
“He’s a murderer,” Arab Gandalf shrieked. “He killed that girl!”
The imam’s display was quite convincing. He’d obviously intended to discover the dead body in the police officer’s company, but finding Rapp inside undoubtedly complicated his plan. If the police officer just so happened to kill Rapp, things would be much less complicated.
“I’m not a murderer,” Rapp said, trying to infuse his words with calm, “and I’m complying with your instructions. See, I’m putting my hands on my head and interlocking my fingers.”
Rapp moved with exaggerated slowness.
The tranquility he was projecting was sharply at odds with the volcanic rage threatening to erupt from his chest. He wanted to unleash his hate in a whirlwind of violence and tear the imam limb from limb, but even in his current state, Hurley’s admonishment still echoed in his thoughts.
No innocents, no law enforcement, and no women and children.
The officer took a step toward Rapp.
Then another.
Rapp continued to try to exude calm indifference, but he was watching the pistol like a hawk. Positioned on his knees as he was, Rapp wouldn’t be able to move quickly. In order to disarm the officer, he needed the pistol to be within arm’s length.
The officer closed the distance again.
His strides were becoming more sure and the pistol had ceased its disturbing wobble. Whether this welcome development was a product of Rapp’s ready compliance or a newfound surge of courage didn’t matter. The result was the same.
One more step.
Rapp needed just one more step.
“Gun! He’s got a gun!”
Arab Gandalf had shouted exactly the right thing. Law enforcement officers the world over were conditioned to respond to one word above all others.
Gun.
That Baby Face didn’t see a gun wouldn’t matter.
The word would trigger a reflexive series of actions.
And Rapp would be dead.
Rapp snatched a greasy wrapper from the floor and hurled it at the officer’s head. Baby Face had about as much to fear from the balled-up sandwich paper as a tank did from a squirt gun. A seasoned officer would have held his weapon on target, or if he was spooked enough, squeezed off a round.
He wouldn’t have tried to dodge the paper.
Baby Face was not seasoned.
Instead of keeping eyes on his target and the pistol’s front sight post, he instinctively raised his shoulder to shelter his face. The pistol followed his arm and the muzzle drifted off target.
Rapp launched from his knees to his feet.
Baby Face realized his mistake.
He swung the pistol back.
Rapp was close, but not close enough. He couldn’t reach the muzzle with the two hands it would take to strip the gun from Baby Face. Instead, he slapped the barrel with an open palm, trying to knock it offline.
The weapon fired.
Muzzle blast buffeted Rapp’s shoulder. Continuing forward, he snared the pistol and turned it against Baby Face’s grip.
A pop sounded as the officer’s wrist snapped, but Rapp didn’t give the man time to cry out.
Instead, he reversed the gun and swung it in a vicious arc that terminated with Baby Face’s skull.
The man dropped to the floor.
“Help!”
While he hadn’t wrenched the door open yet, Arab Gandalf was already screaming at the top of his lungs. Rapp reversed the pistol again, sighted down the barrel, and pressed the trigger.
The imam’s knee exploded in a cloud of gore.
He collapsed with his outstretched fingers just inches from the door. Rapp stepped over the prone policeman, grabbed the imam by his injured leg, and pulled him to the center of the room.
The imam began to wail.
Rapp backhanded him.
Then he shoved the pistol into Arab Gandalf’s mouth.
The old man’s beady eyes bulged as he gagged.
“Listen very carefully,” Rapp said as he swatted away the man’s fumbling attempts to grab the pistol. “I will take this out of your mouth, but if you so much as breathe too loud, I will splatter your brains all over the wall. Got it?”
The man mumbled something incoherent.
Rapp shoved the barrel deeper into the man’s throat. “No one told you to talk. Nod if you understand.”
The imam didn’t so much nod as convulse his head.
“Good,” Rapp said. “It’s coming out now. If you scream, I will shatter all your teeth before I pull the trigger. Got it?”
Another vigorous nod.
Rapp extracted the pistol from the imam’s bloody mouth, wiped the metal on the man’s robes, and then pressed the muzzle under the man’s chin.
“These cinder-block walls are pretty damn thick. I bet I can shoot this pistol at least twice more before anyone comes to check out the commotion, so here’s how this is gonna work.
I’m gonna ask you a question. If I don’t like your answer, I’m gonna shove the muzzle into your nut sack and pull the trigger.
Then I’m gonna ask the question again. If I still don’t like your answer, the next bullet goes into your forehead. Understand?”
A third nod.
“Good. Let’s start with an easy question—who killed the girl?”
A trickle of blood wound its way down Arab Gandalf’s chin, but he didn’t seem to notice. Probably because he was too busy wondering what it would feel like to have his testicles sheared off by a bullet.
“The Lebanese man.”
Rapp nodded. He’d suspected as much, but even if it wasn’t true, it made sense for the imam to answer this way.
The man was a coward and would be looking to escape by taking the coward’s way out—he knew nothing and nothing was his fault.
The next question would be crucial to ensuring he told the truth.
“Why?” Rapp said.
Arab Gandalf licked his split lower lip, no doubt trying to think of a believable lie.
Rapp had no time for that bullshit.
He snapped a jab into the imam’s mouth, then augured the pistol into his shattered knee. “I changed my mind. I’m gonna shoot you in the knee before I move on to your balls. Things get pretty bloody once the testicles rupture, and I can’t have you dying before we finish our conversation.”
His bluster aside, Rapp was on the clock.
Baby Face was already showing signs of returning to consciousness, and Rapp did not want to risk giving the police officer a more permanent injury by striking him in the head again.
Even if the man continued to snooze, Rapp’s arrival at the mosque had surely not gone unnoticed.
Someone could wander in at any moment. This was to say nothing of the police officer’s dispatch center, which was probably expecting a report, or the bruiser Rapp had laid out earlier, or even a passerby who heard something from inside the apartment. He needed to get things moving.
If that meant upping the violence factor, so be it.
“No,” Arab Gandalf said, pushing feebly at the pistol, “don’t shoot. I’ll tell you—he… he was afraid she’d heard too much.”
Rapp’s index finger itched for the trigger.
He wanted to put a second bullet into the imam’s leg anyway. Not because Rapp didn’t believe him. He just wanted the man to feel the vise grip of pain that was crushing his own soul.
“The Lebanese man,” Rapp said. “What’s his name?”
Rapp watched the imam’s face as he asked the question.
Focusing on it with the same intensity he’d devoted earlier to Baby Face’s pistol.
He saw the flicker in the imam’s eyes as the man considered lying, and he reacted accordingly.
Rapp pressed the palm of his right hand over the man’s mouth and then struck a vicious blow to his knee with the pistol’s barrel.
The man thrashed as he howled, but Rapp muffled most of the sound.
“His name,” Rapp said again, this time pressing the pistol into the imam’s groin. “Give it to me.”
“He goes by Abu Hassan—”
Rapp growled.
“—but his true name is Haider Nasser. He’s Hezbollah.”
Rapp knew this already, but saying someone from Lebanon was Hezbollah was about as useful as stating that a World War II–era soldier was a Nazi.
Not every Lebanese citizen was part of Hezbollah, but Hezbollah did run huge swaths of the country.
While the jihadi group was first and foremost a terrorist organization, they also provided social services to the populace like schools, clinics, and even hospitals.
Hezbollah was often referred to as a state within a state.
A name and a terrorist affiliation might be enough for an enterprising CIA analyst to get a bead on Haider, but Rapp wasn’t willing to chance it.
The girl’s death weighed heavily on his conscience and he intended to discuss it with the terrorist in depth.
Preferably, face-to-face.
“What does he do for Hezbollah?” Rapp said.
“I’m not sure of his exact title—”