Présentation de l'éditeur
#1
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR VINCE FLYNN’S MOST EXHILARATING
POLITICAL THRILLER
When Washington, D.C.’s National Counterterrorism Center is struck by a series of devastating explosions, the results are catastrophic—185 killed, including public officials and CIA employees. Such an act of extreme violence calls for extreme measures—and elite counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp, joining forces with trusted team member Mike Nash, finds himself in the frustrating position of having to illustrate the realities of national security to government officials up in arms over the agents who rushed in to save countless American lives. Meanwhile, with three al Qaeda terrorists still at large and Nash traumatized by the horrors he witnessed during the attack, Rapp must help his friend while threading his way through the naysayers on Capitol Hill—and silently, swiftly, do what he must for the sake of his country and the pursuit of honor.
Extrait
Pursuit of Honor
1NEW YORK CITY
It was nearing ten o’clock in the evening when Mitch Rapp decided it was time to move. He stepped from the sedan into the April night, popped his umbrella, clutched the collar of his black trench coat, and set out across a rain-soaked East Twentieth Street. He navigated the puddles and swollen gutter without complaint. The weather was a blessing. Not only did it clear the streets of potential witnesses, it also gave him a reasonable excuse to hide his face from the city’s ever-increasing array of security cameras.
Rapp had traveled to New York City to decide the fate of a man. At an earlier point, he had debated the wisdom of handling the situation himself. In addition to the inherent risk of getting caught, there was another, more pressing problem. Just six days earlier a series of explosions had torn through Washington, D.C., killing 185 and wounding hundreds. Three of the terrorists were still at large, and Rapp had been ordered, unofficially, to find them by any means necessary. So far, however, the investigation had been painfully complicated and had yet to yield a single solid lead. The three men had up and disappeared, which suggested a level of sophistication that few of them had thought the enemy capable of. The last thing Rapp expected, though, was that he would still be dealing with this other issue. In light of the attacks in Washington, he thought the fool would have come to his senses.
Beyond the significance of deciding if the man should live or die, there was the aftermath to consider. Killing him had the very real potential to cause more problems than it would solve. If the guy failed to show up for work there would be a lot of questions, and the majority of them would be directed at Rapp and his boss, Irene Kennedy, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. One tiny misstep, and the shit storm of all shit storms would be brought down on them.
The head of the surveillance team had tried to talk him out of it, but Rapp wasn’t the kind of man who was going to start pulling the trigger from a climate-controlled office a couple hundred miles away. He needed to see with his own eyes if they were missing something—if there wasn’t some unseen or unpredictable factor that had caused the bureaucrat to jump the tracks. Rapp was keenly aware of the universal disdain for the man he had followed to New York. There were plenty of people on the clandestine side of the business who had cause to wish the prick dead, and that was another reason Rapp needed to be absolutely certain he was guilty of what they suspected. His dislike for the man would make it all that much easier to pull the trigger, and Rapp knew he had to fight that urge. He needed to give this idiot every last chance to save himself before they did something that could never be undone.
It would be a mistake to read too deeply into Rapp’s cautious attitude, though. If he found the proof he was looking for, there would be no hand-wringing or queasiness.
