Pursuit Of Honor Read Online Free PDF Page B

behind the closest desk. He stood when Hurley and Rapp entered. The second man was on the couch, lying on his back, his feet up, a Baltimore Orioles hat covering his face. He was either sleeping or didn’t care to look and see who had just arrived.
    The room had the heavy, sour smell of nicotine. When Rapp had gone through his training this place didn’t exist. Hurley used a discreet contracting firm that was run by a former operative and had it built after 9/11. The floor of the barn was excavated and the foundation underpinned, to make room for the basement. The walls were poured and Spancrete sections were placed on top to create the roof for the new rooms and the floor of the barn. Within a two-hour drive of Washington there were three similar facilities, all of them built with private funding, and each one known by only a handful of individuals. Necessity was, after all, the mother of invention. In order to fulfill its mission the CIA needed to be able to conduct most of what it did away from prying eyes and in secret. Hurley had explained on many occasions that during the Cold War they had more than a dozen such places that they would use to debrief defectors as well as the occasional traitor.
    “Where’s the doc?” Hurley asked the big man who had been sitting behind the desk.
    The muscular man pointed toward the steel door at the far end of the room and said, “Talking to Adams. Been in there almost two hours.”
    The big man’s name was Joe Maslick. He was a native of Chicago, and a former Airborne Ranger, who’d done three tours, one in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. He was wearing a black Under Armour T-shirt and a pair of jeans.
    Hurley looked at Rapp and asked, “Is he drunk?”
    Rapp nodded. “He was pretty much on his way when we picked him up last night.”
    “And since then?”
    “I gave him a few drinks on the plane ride down.”
    “No problems at the airport?”
    Rapp shook his head. “Loaded him in the hangar right there at Teterboro.”
    “The pilots?” Hurley asked.
    “Cockpit door was closed the whole time.”
    Hurley mumbled something under his breath and then said, “Why didn’t you just drive him down?”
    Hurley’s words were less a question than a criticism, and Rapp did not do well with either. If it were anyone other than his old instructor, Rapp would have asked him why he hadn’t gotten his lazy ass out of bed and handled the job himself, but it was Hurley, so he gave him a pass. “Stan, these pilots have flown me all over the world. They’ve seen a lot of shit.”
    “And if they’re asked at some point who was on that plane…?”
    “They’ll say they deadheaded it down to Richmond because they had an early hop the next morning.”
    “And when the feds want to talk to the exec who chartered the plane?”
    Rapp glanced at his watch. It was 6:58 A.M. “The plane is on its way to Mobile as we speak. And the man on board has no idea I even exist.”
    “I still don’t like it,” Hurley grumbled as he began digging for a pack of cigarettes.
    Rapp almost said, tough shit, but didn’t, because he knew this was harder on Hurley than he’d ever admit. He had been best friends with Adams ’s father. Had served all over the world with him. Wanting to get off the subject, Rapp asked, “Did you listen to the audio from last night?”
    “Yeah.” Hurley exhaled a fresh cloud of smoke.
    “And?”
    Hurley stepped behind the desk and looked at the flat-screen monitor on the left. It showed Adams sitting in the next room talking to a fiftyish man with curly blond hair. His name was Thomas Lewis, and he was a clinical psychologist. Hurley wasn’t sure who he was more upset with, himself or the little turd sitting in the other room. “He’s a fucking traitor… an embarrassment to his family name.”
    Rapp didn’t know what to say, so he kept his mouth shut, and since Maslick wasn’t much for conversation the three of them stood there in silence watching the screen. Across