Kennedy decided this would be a good time to exit. “As soon as I’m done I’ll come back and give you an update.”

She turned and left the room, cutting through the secretary’s outer office and then down the stairs and past the White House Mess. She stopped outside the secure door of the Situation Room and grabbed her bar-coded and laminated badge that was clipped to the lapel of her jacket. She stuck it under the scanner next to the door and listened to the click. A small camera above the door monitored her every move. When the door clicked she entered and was greeted by a fresh-faced man in civilian clothing with an obvious military bearing.

“Major Hansen, I presume.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Another marine, she thought. They were always throwing around Ma’am instead of Ms. She didn’t take the use of the antiquated phrase personally. It was a byproduct of being yelled at by their drill instructors for three straight months while they tried to make it through Boot Camp or Officer’s Candidate School.

“Would you please contact the Global Ops Center and have them get Mr. Rapp on the line for me. I’ll take it in the conference room.”

“Yes, Ma’am. Anything else, Ma’am?”

She considered telling him to stop calling her Ma’am, but figured the call was more important. “Just the call, please.”

Kennedy went into the conference room and set her purse down on the table. While she waited for the call to be connected she tried to guess on a scale of one to ten just how upset Rapp would be. She considered the possibility that this might be one of those rare occasions where she would need to bite back. It wasn’t her style, and it could be a dangerous proposition when dealing with Rapp. Often the best way to manage him was to let him blow his lid and get it out of his system. If it wasn’t something that was her direct fault she could often ride it out in silence and then make him feel bad for losing his cool. She hoped that would be the case this morning.

The large, white, secure phone rang once. Kennedy grabbed the handset and identified herself. The voice on the other end asked her to hold and then a moment later a woman came on the line. It was Agent Brooks. Kennedy asked for Rapp and then waited.

About thirty seconds later a tired, gruff voice came on the line and asked, “What’s up?”

“You’re not going to like this,” Kennedy started, “so I’m going to get right to the point. The president just told the president-elect that you found Gazich and are on your way back to the States.” Kennedy paused knowing it was the next part that would upset him. In a voice lacking conviction she said, “Alexander wants the man put on trial. When you land you’ll be met by the FBI and they will take custody of the prisoner.” There was a five second pause before Kennedy got her reply.

“Have you people lost your fucking minds?”

Kennedy took a deep breath and said, “No.”

“This guy is a terrorist. A hired assassin. A foreigner with I don’t know how many passports and aliases. I kidnapped him, for Christ sake.”

“And?”

“And,” Rapp screamed, “think big picture. Think tactics and techniques. I don’t want the FBI asking me a bunch of questions about how I run my operations.”

“We’ll be able to limit that.”

“Bullshit! You know you won’t. If they put him on trial that means the piece of crap gets a lawyer, and that means I get to spend a week in some conference room getting deposed by a bunch of socialists who do pro bono work for fucking Amnesty International.”

“Mitch, you know I won’t let that happen.”

“You can’t promise that. A year from now, when this all goes down, you’re not going to be in a position to protect me. You’re gonna be writing a memoir and giving speeches for a hundred grand a pop.”

Kennedy was expecting him to be upset, but not this upset. “Mitch, I don’t see the problem. You said you were a hundred percent sure this is the guy. You must have some pretty good evidence against him.”

“Not the kind of evidence you use in court!”

Kennedy detected something in his voice. “Did you torture a confession out of him?”

“No,” Rapp muttered.

“That didn’t sound convincing.”

“I did not torture a confession out of him.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Rapp muttered something again, swore, and then said, “I shot him.”

“We can deal with that. I’m sure you had cause.”

“I shot him four times.”

“And he’s alive,” Kennedy snapped.

“I wasn’t trying to kill him.”

Kennedy placed her hand over her forehead. “Oh god! Please don’t tell me you kneecapped him. Please don’t tell me you’ve been torturing him.”

“No!”

“Then why in the hell did you shoot him four times?” she barked. “You’re supposed to be an expert marksmen.”

“Oh…fuck. You’re killing me. If I have to listen to another desk jockey question what I do in the field I’m going to go postal.”

“I’m killingyou? Are you kidding me? Mitch, you need to help me. You need to explain to me why you shot the prisoner four times, because when you land the FBI is going to take this guy into custody, and they sure as hell are going to ask.”

“Trust me, you wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“You work behind a desk and I work in the field.”

“Mitchell!” she snapped.

“He was armed, I was in his backyard, there were other people involved, and I was operating without backup.”

“Where were the others?”

“They got delayed at the airport.”

“And you couldn’t wait for them?”

“No.”

“Or was it that you didn’t want to wait for them?”

“Yeah, Irene. I wanted to be the lone cowboy so I could get all the credit. I’ll tell you what. Maybe I’ll have the pilot drop us down to five thousand feet, I’ll open the cargo door and kick this piece of crap into the ocean and you can all kiss my ass.”

“Mitch, I’m not saying you did any of this to try and get credit, what I’m doing is…”

“Second-guessing me from thousands of miles away.”

“I’m not second-guessing you. I’m trying to find out what happened so we can figure out what to say to the FBI.”

“It was like I said; it was his home turf, he’d already killed two people and I didn’t have time to wait around for backup so I moved in and took care of the situation.”

“Why did you have to shoot him four times?”

“This guy’s good. I was flying solo, so I needed to put him out of commission fast.”

“What do you mean put him out of commission?”

“I needed to cripple him.”

Kennedy thought about what that meant for a moment.

Filling the dead air, Rapp said, “This isn’t the type of guy who surrenders when you shout, freeze.”

“So you shot first and asked questions later.”

“Basically.”

“Where did you shoot him?”

“Once in each knee.”

“That’s only twice. You said you shot him four times.”

“And then in each hand.”

“So you crucified him.”

“No. If I’d shot him in the feet I would have crucified him.”

Kennedy was starting to figure out how bad this would look. “Don’t you think you might have gone a bit overboard?”

“Irene, I’m going to say this one more time. I’m the one out here risking my ass to hunt this guy down. I’d just seen him kill two men in the span of about ten minutes and neither of them had a chance. This guy is good. I was the one on-site. I was the one who had to make the decision, and anyone who wants to second-guess me can go fuck themselves.”

“Including me?”

“Yes, including you, and President Hayes and President-Elect Alexander and anyone else who wants to armchair quarterback me. In fact, I’ll tell you what. The next time this shit happens you can all get off your bureaucratic asses, pick up a gun, and head out into the real world and see how you fare. You try taking a guy like Gazich, and he’ll put a bullet in your head before you finish utteringfreeze.”

Kennedy clutched the phone in one hand and had the other one on her hip. She was staring straight ahead at the wood paneled wall and asked, “Are you done?”