Rapp kept his eyes on the front door. “What am I thinking?”

“You’re thinking of jump-starting this thing. You have other shit you need to take care of and you’re really not in the mood to sit around in a car all night doing surveillance.”

Rapp’s gaze didn’t waver. “Anything else?”

“Yeah . . . you’re frustrated. You’re thinking this Max Johnson should know better and the fact that he doesn’t means he deserves a good ass kicking.”

“And the Russians?” Rapp asked.

“You don’t like that they come over here and break all of our rules.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah . . . I see the way you’ve been eyeballing those four bouncers at the door.”

Rapp grinned.

“You’re itching,” Coleman said in a not-so-happy voice.

“Sometimes,” Rapp said as he unbuckled his seat belt, “the best way to handle these situations is to force the issue.”

“These Russians are nasty people, Mitch. They don’t play by the rules.”

Rapp turned to Coleman and arched his left eye. “And we do?”

“No . . . not exactly,” Coleman stammered for a second, “but we’re not crazy like they are.”

“Well maybe it’s time we get a little crazy. Make them feel a little uncomfortable about coming into our backyard and recruiting some jackass like Johnson.”

“They don’t scare easy.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Coleman sighed. He knew there was no changing Rapp’s mind when he got like this. “So what are you going to do?”

“Improvise.”

“And if the locals show up?”

Rapp dug into his suit coat pocket and asked, “You said Marcus is monitoring the club’s network?”

“Yes.”

Rapp pulled out a leather ID case. He opened it, reached behind his CIA ID and pulled out a second laminated piece of paper. This one said HOMELAND SECURITY in dark blue block letters. He slid it between the CIA ID and the clear plastic window. He showed Coleman. “Works like a charm. Who’s not for Homeland Security?”

Coleman shook his head. “If the cops show up I’m out of here and I’m taking my guys with me.”

“Understood. Tell Marcus that in about two minutes I want him to crash their security cameras and their phone lines and kill the mobile phone traffic.”

“Who’s going in?”

Rapp thought about it for a second, looked at the four big guys at the door, and assumed there were at least another six or eight inside. “I think you and I can handle it.”

Coleman half laughed and said, “Fine, but I’m telling Mick to stay close.”

Mick Reavers was Coleman’s one-man wrecking crew. He was built like an NFL linebacker, only meaner. “Fine by me.” Rapp got out and popped the trunk while Coleman issued instructions to the rest of the team. He dialed in the two three-digit codes on a large black rectangular case and then slid the buttons out. Both hasps popped up with the thud of an old-fashioned briefcase. The inside of the case consisted of a large gray block of foam. Sections of the foam had been cut out in the silhouette of a variety of weapons. Rapp already had his 9mm Glock on his hip. As was almost always the case it was loaded with subsonic hollow-point ammunition. Rapp took his wallet out of his left pocket and set it next to the case. He grabbed the shorter of two silencers and put it where the wallet had been.

Rapp never went anywhere without a gun, and he had all the proper paperwork to carry the thing anywhere he wanted, but even so, the quickest way to land yourself in hot water was to fire your weapon in the District. Whether the action was warranted or not, the District was very sensitive to gunplay. Rapp looked toward the door and considered the crowd. He wasn’t going to go in without a gun, but he would have to be in big trouble before he used it. The Glock would be for defensive purposes only. He stared at the cutouts, trying to decide between several other less-than-lethal options. There was the pepper spray, but it wasn’t exactly his favorite, especially in a crowded place like a club. If you used enough of it, the next thing you knew, it got sucked into the ventilation system and the entire place would empty as if there were a fire, people coughing and spitting, emergency crews showing up to give medical aid. That was the type of thing that might attract a local TV station.

Rapp didn’t want to cause that kind of stir if he could avoid it. He decided on an expandable tactical baton, an ASP F21 in a small belt holster. It was a heavy black piece of steel about eight inches in length with a foam grip. With the proper flick of the wrist the eight inches extended to twenty-one. It was a nasty little weapon that was great to use against bigger people with long reaches. It also worked well if you needed to clear a path through a crowd of people. A couple of flicks and people would start moving like spooked cattle.

Rapp hooked the ASP onto his belt on his right side and then decided on one more thing. He grabbed a Taser X26 and two extra cartridges. It looked pretty much like a gun except parts of it were yellow. He put the two extra cartridges in his front right pocket and stuffed the taser between the small of his back and his pants. Coleman joined him at the back of the car and Rapp asked, “Do you need anything?”

Coleman looked at the case as if he were shopping for watches. “Is that your new M-4 rifle?”

“Yep.”

“I’ll take it.”

“Funny.” Rapp handed him the pepper spray and said, “Don’t use it unless you really think we need it.”

“Got it.” Coleman hooked the bottle to his belt and buttoned his suit coat. “So what’s your plan?

Rapp shrugged and closed the trunk. “We go in like we own the place . . . which we do. This is Washington, not Moscow.”

“And then what?”

“We grab the little prick by the scruff of his neck and we pull him out of there.”

Coleman had a worried expression on his face. “And if they try to stop us?”

Rapp thought about it for a second and then said, “A few of them will probably end up in the hospital.”

Coleman moaned, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Rapp shook it off and started walking toward the club and its four massive gatekeepers. “You always say that.”

Coleman fell in a half step behind and under his breath mumbled, “And I’m usually right.”

NORTHERN ARKANSAS

OTHER than the four years he’d spent in the army, Dan Stewart had worked his entire adult life for the same employer. A Lowell, Arkansas, native, he’d practically fallen into the job when he returned from his second tour of duty in Vietnam. A new low-price retail chain just up the road was hiring. Stewart took a job as an assistant manager and moved to Eureka Springs a few hours east. Within a year he was rewarded for his strong work ethic by being promoted to manager and moved to Branson, Missouri, to open one of the company’s new stores.

That was where he’d met his Kelly. She was one of his cashiers and after a courtship of just five months he married the daughter of the local Baptist preacher. Not a big deal for most, but Stewart was a Methodist, and in Lowell, Arkansas, the Methodists were warned to stay away from the Baptists and vice versa. Fifteen years, four kids, nine stores, and six states later, he was transferred to headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, and promoted to senior management. The timing was perfect in the sense that it allowed all four kids to put down some roots and attend Bentonville High School. The kids all graduated and three of them went on to college and one joined the army like his dad.

As the years trickled by Stewart took part in the employer stock plan. During all those moves he had promised Kelly they would return to Branson when he finally stopped working. It was during his thirty-ninth year with Wal-Mart that she found out they had accumulated over three hundred thousand shares of preferred stock. With the price hovering around fifty dollars a share at the time the math was not difficult. On his fortieth anniversary with the company his wife forced him into retirement. They bought a cabin on Table Rock Lake where Kelly had spent the summers of her youth. After the first year Stewart bought the hobby farm just down the road. Kelly’s relatives seemed to drop by the lake a little too frequently and he was getting way too much crap from his friends for living in Missouri. So he convinced his wife they needed the hobby farm so he could store all of his stuff and avoid paying the outrageous Missouri taxes.