Maryland, Monday morning

Mitch Rapp woke up on his stomach. He reached over to find Anna but she wasn't there. He had no desire to move so he simply lay there, thinking about how tired he was. His left shoulder was painfully stiff. He would have liked to think it was from the time he dislocated it playing lacrosse for his alma mater Syracuse University, but he knew it was something a little more serious. The real damage had been done by a bullet. At thirty-two Rapp was a beat-up old man. He had barely taken a break since graduating from college. For years he had been obsessed with the fight against Islamic terrorists, obsessed with killing as many of them as he could before they had the chance to do the same to innocent people whose only crime was that they disagreed with the zealots' bastardization of Islam.

There were days when Rapp wondered if he had really made a difference. After all, the crazies were still out there threatening to bring Armageddon to America. In his rare moments of self-pity, he thought it was all for naught. He knew deep down inside, though, that he'd made a huge difference. He had never bothered to count each and every person he'd killed. The obvious reason was that he preferred not to know, and the more practical one was that there was no way he could ascertain the actual number. Machine guns and explosives, the indiscriminate weapons of war, made the tally impossible, but the number was large. Rapp knew it was well over fifty and possibly one hundred, and those were only by his hand alone. If he counted the times he'd helped lead Special Forces units on take downs or the times he painted a target so U. S. jets could drop laser-guided bombs, the number was easily double if not triple.

Those days were behind him, or at least he hoped they were. It was not going to be easy to walk away from the action after all these years. He was extremely good at what he did. And what he did when you stripped everything away was kill. Yes, he had great intelligence. He spoke Arabic, French and Italian fluently. He had keen analytical abilities and organizational skills, but when you stripped it all away he was an assassin. He was America's assassin, though. He was the very tip of the U. S. spear, the man on the ground getting things done, taking the battle to the very enemy who had sworn to bring a reign of terror and death to the people of the United States. Mitch Rapp was the front line soldier in the most singular sense of the word. In this era of laser-guided bombs, cruise missiles and surgical strikes, he was a neurosurgeon, operating in countries like Iran and Iraq for months at a time with virtually no aid from his handlers in Washington. He stalked his prey carefully, got in close and then when the time was right, he eliminated them. Despite all of his success, only a handful of people knew of his existence. The Orion Team and its members were one of the closest held secrets in Washington, and fewer than ten people even knew the name of the organization.

Rapp knew there were those in Washington who would absolutely lose their minds if they found out what he had been up to for the last decade. Part of him was sensitive to the problem. God knows he had seen some abuses of power during his tenure, but not by himself or Kennedy. There was a definite need for congressional oversight, but there was also a need for black operations. Politicians were politicians after all, and throughout the history of governments they had proven themselves incapable of keeping secrets. By virtue of their need to talk, raise money and peddle influence, all but a few were simply unable to keep their mouths shut. This was the standard feeling among the intelligence and military types in Washington, while on the other side of the issue the politicians looked at the people at the CIA and the Pentagon as a bunch of crazy cowboys who needed to be kept on a short leash lest they shoot themselves in the foot.

In a way Rapp agreed with both of them. There was enough blame to go around on both sides. The Agency had certainly launched some harebrained schemes with almost no chance of success, schemes that flew in the face of congressional oversight and more importantly to Rapp, common sense. There were also those on the Hill who had intentionally leaked classified information to the media to embarrass political enemies. This was how Washington worked, and had worked for years.

Americans had grown soft with all of their rights and personal freedom. They had no idea how harsh the rest of the world was. On the surface most Americans would be shocked by the things he had done. But they would be shocked from the comfort of their homes, having no idea what things were like in the Middle East. Women would judge him the harshest, and they would do so without thinking how they would be treated by the men he killed. Women in these fundamentalist Islamic communities weren't even treated as second-class citizens. They were property owned by their fathers, and then by their husbands once a marriage was arranged. No, America didn't have the stomach to be confronted with what he had done. That was why secrecy was essential.

Rapp stood and looked out the window of his small Cape Cod style home. Down below, the water of the Chesapeake Bay looked cold. All of the leaves were off the trees and the cold gray skies of November had settled in. Standing in only his boxers, Rapp shivered briefly and then headed downstairs. There wasn't much enthusiasm in his step as he descended. He had a ten o'clock meeting at Langley that he had some serious reservations about. When he reached the first floor his new best friend Shirley the mutt was waiting for him. The dog was incredibly smart: and obedient. Rapp patted her on the head and said hello. He had picked her up at the Humane Society one night several weeks earlier. Rapp had needed the canine to give him a little cover for some lurking that he had to do. Due to his normal unreliable schedule owning a pet was out of the question, but things were about to change. His days of globe-trotting were over. Or at least he hoped.

Rapp entered the kitchen to find the love of his life sitting at the table eating a bowl of cereal and reading the Post. He walked over and kissed Anna on the forehead. Without saying anything he went straight for the coffeepot and poured himself a cup. No sugar, no cream, just straight black coffee.

Anna Rielly swallowed a mouthful of cereal and looked up at Rapp with sparkling green eyes. "How are you feeling this morning?"

"Like shit." He moved his shoulder around in an effort to loosen it.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm getting old. That's what's wrong." Rapp took his first sip of the hot black liquid.

Rielly grinned. "What are you talking about? You're only thirty two."

"I might as well be sixty-three with the life I've lived."

Rielly studied her man for a second. They had met under the strangest of circumstances, and at the time she didn't realize how ruggedly handsome he was. But she'd had ample time to notice since. She looked at Mitch's olive-skinned body. There wasn't an inch of fat on the man. He was one lean muscle from his broad shoulders to his sleek calves. There were some flaws, although Rielly never thought of them that way. Mitch liked to refer to these flaws as the chinks in his armor. Rapp had three visible bullet holes: one on his leg and two more on his stomach. There was a third, she knew, but that one was covered up by a thick scar on his shoulder where the doctors had torn him open to get at the bullet, pull out the bone fragments and reconstruct his shoulder socket. Besides that there was a scar left by a knife that had skewered his right side. And there was one more scar that he was particularly proud of. It was a constant reminder of the man he had sworn he would kill when he started on his crazy journey ten years ago. It ran along the left side of his face, from his ear down to his jawline. The plastic surgeons had done a great job minimizing the mark to a thin line, but more important to Rapp, the man who had given him the scar was now dead.