Rapp didn't think of his dad often, other than the brief periods when he lamented the fact that they never really got to know each other. They'd been together for just eight years, the first four of which Mitch had no real recollection, and the next four which were pretty vague. His dad, like most dads back in the seventies, wasn't around much. He was a lawyer and worked long hours. He played golf on Saturday mornings, rain or shine, so Sundays were really the only time they spent together as a family. What he did remember about his dad was that he was a firm but decent and fair man. His mother, a deeply religious and eternally optimistic person, made it very clear to her boys just how responsible their father had been both alive and from beyond. Like the good attorney that he was, everything had been in order when his heart stopped pumping. The estate planning was all up to date and their father had purchased more than enough life insurance to take care of them. The mortgage was paid off and money put aside for college. Financially speaking, his mom never had to worry.
Mitch never heard his father raise his voice other than the few times that he or Steven had done something really bad-like the time Steven almost burned the house down or the time Mitch got the ladder out of the garage and got up on the roof with Steven. Mitch jumped and landed in a pile of leaves and Steven, who was only a year and a half younger but considerably smaller, didn't quite make it. Little Stevey, as he was known by the entire neighborhood, landed instead on the sidewalk and ended up in the emergency room with two broken legs.
Mitch actually got slapped upside the head and spanked for that one. It was the only time he ever remembered his dad laying a hand on him, and even all these years later he still felt like shit about it. Not because his dad had hit him, but because he'd let his father down. Steven was the miracle baby. Born five weeks early, he'd spent the first three months of his life in the hospital, clinging to life. Mentally, Rapp's kid brother was a phenom, but on the athletic fields of their youth, Steven was a runt. He was extremely small for his age, and to draw further attention to himself, he was topped with a shock of blond, almost white hair. He and Mitch could not have looked more different. Where Mitch had black hair and olive skin, Steven had light hair and fair skin that would turn pink inside fifteen minutes if a liberal coating of sunscreen wasn't applied. Mitch spent summers in swim trunks or shorts, and Steven spent them covered with light-colored clothes or in the shade. Mitch took after his dad and Steven took after their blond-haired, blue-eyed mother.
Rapp looked over at the baseball diamond and remembered how Steven used to bellow out the pitch count, number of outs, and runs after every pitch. For a little kid he had an unusually deep voice, and he used it to great effect. Even back then the little genius had a thing for numbers. Because nobody wanted him on their team, he was designated permanent catcher and scorekeeper. In addition to his ability to never lose track of the score, he was also perfect for the job because he was incapable of telling a lie. There was no favoritism when he was behind the plate.
It was also decided at Mitch's urging that Stevey didn't need to tag the runner. All he had to do was catch the ball and touch the plate. This way there would be no collisions with kids twice his little brother's size. Everything had gone fine that summer until Bert Duser, the fat neighborhood bully, decided to steamroll the minute and neutral catcher. Mitch had caught a fly ball on the run in shallow center field and one-hopped it on a line to home plate. Duser was on third and tried to tag. In direct relation to his size Duser was very slow. Knowing he was out with a good ten feet to go Duser brought up his elbows and nailed little Stevey. Rapp remembered his little brother's black athletic glasses flying up in the air and the tiny white-haired catcher going ass over teakettle into the backstop.
What happened next became the stuff of neighborhood legend. Mitch was ten, Duser was twelve. Duser was half a head taller and at least twenty pounds heavier, and no one ever challenged him, but on this sunny summer day none of that mattered. After his father's death, Mitch took his oath to protect his little brother very seriously. Overcome with rage, he broke into a full sprint. Somewhere between second base and home plate he threw his glove to the ground. He didn't remember this, but it was recounted to him in great detail later. He also didn't remember screaming like an Indian on the warpath, but that's what his friends told him. He did remember leaving his feet and hitting Duser like a human missile. After that there was a flurry of punches thrown, all by Mitch, and then there was a lot of blood, all of it Duser's.
It ended with Duser running home in tears, and Mitch getting grounded when Mrs. Duser showed up on their doorstep with her bloodied son. Mitch didn't argue with his mother much, but he remembered saying some pretty mean things that day-most of it having to do with how his dad would have handled Mrs. Duser if he'd still been around. Not Mom, though, she was a Jesus-loving, turn-the-other-cheek Lutheran. Dad, on the other hand, had been an eye-for-an-eye God-fearing Catholic. Mom was New Testament, and Dad was Old Testament. Mitch was decidedly more in his father's camp than his mother's, and rather than suffer an unjust punishment he ran away from home. The next morning a Fairfax County deputy found him sleeping in Turkey Run Park and brought him home. When he saw what he'd put his mother through, he was sufficiently shamed to stay put until he graduated from high school.
Rapp shook his head. That day had been the start of it all-his first fight, and the first time he ever truly challenged authority. He wondered briefly if Duser turned out all right, or if he was still a prick. Rapp looked over at the practice fields, where he'd learned to play football and lacrosse, and where he'd first laid eyes on Maureen "the Dream" Eliot. He fell for her hard, and she ended up being the real reason why he decided to take a lacrosse scholarship at Syracuse rather than the one offered by the University of North Carolina. Maureen wanted to get into broadcasting, and Syracuse was the best. Looking back on it now, it seemed foolish, but the two of them believed with all their hearts that they would get married one day. Rapp honestly believed they would have, but unfortunately, they never got the chance because on December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was blown from the sky on its way back to America with 259 passengers on board. Maureen had been one of thirty-five Syracuse students returning from a semester abroad. What Rapp didn't know at the time was just how deeply that terrorist act would change his life.
Maybe it had changed before that, when he was fifteen and he saw Maureen for the first time, maybe it had changed when he felt the undeniable satisfaction of pounding the crap out of a bully. It was strange standing here looking back on his youth and the decisions he'd made at such a young age-decisions that eventually led him to where he was today. It made him wonder how things would have been if he'd never met Maureen and fallen in love with her. In the wake of the catastrophe he'd asked God a thousand times, "Why couldn't she have missed that plane?" He'd analyzed all of the choices she'd made. If only she'd stayed at Syracuse instead of spending a semester overseas. If only they'd gone somewhere else to school. He'd done the same things people always do when they are visited with such unexpected tragedy. He asked why, and wondered endlessly how things could have been different.
It wasn't until almost a year after the tragedy that he was approached by someone who got him to look at the disaster in an entirely different way. A woman from Washington came to visit him and after a lengthy discussion she had asked him, "What if someone could have prevented the attack in the first place?" That was the first carrot that had been dangled in front of him. The first trip was followed by a second, where an even more enticing question had been asked. "How would you like to track down the people who did this and kill them?" Rapp had the talent and the drive, and the CIA wanted him.