The Third Option by Vince Flynn Read Free Book Online Page A

with tremendous force, his eyes rolled back into his head, and his entire body went limp.
    Jane Hoffman's heart was racing, and her hands were shaking. It was her husband who was supposed to be in here, and she was supposed to be out in the car. With her gloved hand, she picked up Rapp's Ruger from the floor and shot the bodyguard twice in the chest. She tossed the Ruger over by Rapp's body and then detached the silencer from the end of her pistol. When she was done, she placed her own gun in the bodyguard's hand. Grabbing a small canister from her pocket, she sprayed a fine mist of gunpowder residue onto the bodyguard's hand so it would appear that he had fired the weapon. She stood and backed up. She was looking for something. On the floor by her right foot, she found it: the bodyguard's Heckler amp; Koch pistol. She picked it up and put it in her holster.
    Relieved to be done, she ran to the door, unlocked it, and stepped out into the foyer. She walked quickly to the front door, the joyous sounds of the party spilling forth from the ballroom, no one the wiser to what had just happened. Jane Hoffman was outside and down the steps in seconds. Her husband was nervously waiting for her behind the wheel of the sedan, and the second she was in the car, he sped down the driveway.

5
    The man stood near the edge of the forest not more than a hundred yards from where Rapp had been the night before. From his elevated position, he could clearly see the front of the mansion. He had one hand against his left ear and was holding a small pair of binoculars in his right hand. A coil ran from his earpiece down under the collar of his dark brown jacket and was attached to a Motorola Saber encrypted radio. He listened with great interest to what was going on inside the house. It had already started. He had heard the surprise in Rapp's voice at the sudden of turn of events. Now he was waiting for the woman to exit the mansion. If she didn't make it out alive, that was fine, but if she was merely wounded, that was not acceptable. No one could be left alive to talk, He was under strict orders.
    It had to look as if Rapp had been killed by the bodyguard. Hagenmiller must die first and then Rapp. If the Jansens could pull it off and make things look convincing, they would live. If they screwed up in the slightest way, they would be eliminated. That was why he was there – to manage the situation closely.
    The bearded man standing in the woods was a former employee of the CIA. He was known by a few close friends as the Professor. His real name was Peter Cameron. At first glance, he was not the type of person you would expect to find in this line of work. In his late forties and a good thirty pounds overweight, he was not about to get physical with an adversary. But that had never been his style. Cameron managed situations from a discreet distance, and if he needed to intercede, it was always done with his right index finger, not his fists. He was an expert marksman and believed fervently that the easiest way to kill a man was with a bullet. More often than not, though, he was a voyeur – a man who worked behind the scenes and watched from the shadows. Cameron dispatched the assassins, and more and more, he had enjoyed the thrill of going into the field and watching things develop. It was far more interesting than sitting behind a desk at Langley and getting briefed via satellite uplink. Cameron needed to be on top of every detail, and he couldn't do that from the other side of the Atlantic. A lot was riding on this mission. An incredible amount, really.
    Cameron had heard murmurs about the man they called Iron Man, and if the stories were only half true, Mitch Rapp was amazing. Cameron admired him for his skill and determination. In a raw egotistical way, he was excited about being the person responsible for taking down someone as strong as Rapp. Yes, there was a little bit of guilt involved in killing an asset who had served the Agency so well,