Executive Power by Vince Flynn Page B

figure out how you’re going to spin this when it breaks, because I’m not going to stay quiet.”

10
    T he room was located on the seventh floor of the hotel. David slid his passkey into the slot and when the light turned green he placed his forearm on the handle and opened the door. His meeting with General Hamza hadn’t lasted long, and knowing what the future had in store for the Iraqi thug helped to make their encounter more bearable than usual. Fortunately, Hamza hadn’t indulged in his usual hour of browbeating and self-aggrandizement. The general was very fond of reminding his contact of the Palestinian people’s position in the Arab pecking order. In Hamza’s exalted point of view, the Palestinians ranked just above camel dung.
    When the general finished his drink and stood to leave, David knew what was causing him to cut short tonight’s lecture. There was something in Hamza’s room that the general wanted to get back to. It was for that reason that David was in a hurry. His spies had followed the general’s men earlier in the day and had witnessed them once again kidnap a young girl.
    He’d never left the hotel. After watching the general and his bodyguards leave, David waited a few minutes and then headed for the lobby. One of his people met him and took the cases. David then headed up to the room that he’d checked into three days earlier.
    Grabbing a pair of latex gloves from his pocket, he went to work. In front of the bathroom mirror he peeled off the beard and wiped clean the gray dye from his hair and eyebrows. Both the beard and the damp washcloth were placed in a Ziploc bag. Next he took off the suit and shoes and grabbed a backpack from the closet. He put on a pair of black pants, black tennis shoes, dark shirt and coat and then rolled the other clothes up tightly and stuffed everything into the backpack. After going over the room one last time to make sure he wasn’t leaving anything behind, David walked to the sliding glass door and yanked it open.
    Before stepping onto the balcony he peered to his left and right to see if anyone was about. With the balconies on either side clear, David casually walked outside and continued his surveillance. From one of the rooms below he could hear loud music playing on a stereo. David’s eyes burned with hatred at the thought of what might already be happening.
    General Hamza was a vile, disgusting man in so many ways, but none more so than in his penchant for young girls. Prepubescent girls to be precise. David had discovered this perverse side of the general while he’d been watching him for the last several months. There had been at least two other occasions that David knew of where the general’s bodyguards had snatched young Palestinian girls from the street and brought them back to the hotel so the general could have his fun with them. Using his contacts with the local Jordanian authorities, David dug around and found that the police had actually attempted to question the general about some of the girls who had been abducted. Several days later word had come down from the highest of places telling the police not to harass General Hamza. The Jordanians were not about to let the welfare of a handful of young Palestinian girls interfere with their relations with Iraq.
    As David tied a climbing rope to the side of his balcony, he focused on the task at hand. This would not be the first time he’d killed and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. He always operated with a calm precision that steered clear of either anger or pleasure. Tonight, however, he was finding it a bit difficult to suppress some of his feelings about the job at hand. The arrogance of General Hamza had gotten to him. The Iraqis had co-opted the Palestinian issue under the guise of Arab brotherhood for the simple goal of driving a wedge between the Arab states and America. If it was only that, David could live with it. He had a