“I know you all too well, Glen, but apparently you don’t know me very well, if you think I’m going to let you live.”

“Live?” Adams asked incredulously. “You wouldn’t dare!”

“I’ve dared more times than I can count, and for far less than this. You’re a traitor, and unless you can somehow explain to me why in the hell you’ve been leaking classified information, I’m going to kill you.” Rapp looked into the eyes of the man sitting next to him and said, “It’s really not that complicated, and if you really believe I’m the monster you claim, you should know I’m serious.”

The seriousness of his predicament finally sank in. Adams, his jaw slack, stared at Rapp for a long moment and then, blinking, looked to the driver and shouted, “Pull over right now!” The driver ignored him, so Adams repeated himself, but even louder.

Rapp twisted in his seat, took a good look at Adams, picked his spot, and then let loose a left jab that caught the inspector general square on the chin. Adams’s head bounced off the window and then his entire body went slack.

CHAPTER 4

TOOLESBORO, IOWA

THE old farmhouse sat nestled in a cusp of trees a few hundred yards from the banks of the Mississippi River. A creek flowing from the northwest forked and flowed around the rise of land before joining up again and draining into the big river that divided America roughly in half. The eighty-acre parcel was mostly wooded, with some rolling open land to the west. Most important, it offered concealment.

Hakim had found it on his drive north from Hannibal, Missouri, the previous fall. It had been advertised in the West Burlington newspaper as the perfect retreat for solitude, and Hakim decided it was worth a look. After a brief phone call with the local realtor he learned that the family had been selling off parcels of land for over a decade.