Free American Assassin by Vince Flynn

won’t let it happen again.”
    “I’m afraid that’s not good enough.”
    Hurley lit a cigarette and casually said, “Let’s not make this into something bigger than it needs to be.”
    “Bullshit!” Lewis said with genuine fury.
    “Come on…” Hurley said trying to shrug the whole thing off.
    “Don’t ‘come on’ me—you fucked up today, and you fucked up big-time.”
    Kennedy leaned back, her eyes wide, unable to hide her surprise at Lewis’s strong condemnation.
    “Let’s not overreact,” Hurley said easily, trying to take some of the heat out of the conversation.
    “Overreact.” Lewis leaned forward. “I’m not sure it would be possible to overreact to this situation, and what is really bothering me is that you know it, but you’re too pigheaded to admit it.”
    “It’s not the end of the world.”
    Lewis’s indignation was growing with each denial. “You’re supposed to be infallible. These guys are supposed to fear you, loathe you, hate your fucking guts, but the one thing they are never supposed to do is lay a shiner on you.” Lewis pointed at Hurley’s swollen eye. “And they definitely aren’t supposed to beat you … especially not five minutes after they’ve walked through the gate.”
    “He didn’t beat me,” Hurley growled.
    “Well … that’s debatable. From what I’ve heard he had you beat and the only way you got out of it was by cheating.”
    “Yeah … well, life’s not fair.”
    “At this stage, Stan, these guys are like young pups. You know that. When we lay down the rules we can’t break them. It sends the wrong signal.”
    Hurley leaned back and stubbornly folded his arms across his chest. “I was suckered into this thing.”
    “I’m not sure you were, but for a moment, I’ll go along with you.” Lewis paused briefly and then said, “You’re not supposed to get suckered. You’re supposed to run these dogs until they’re so tired they can barely stand. You’re supposed to watch them go after each other … get a sense of what they’re capable of, and then you’re supposed bring them into that barn and smack them down, just like when you and I went through boot camp. This is delicate work, God dammit, and you know it. There’s a reason why we do things the way we do them, and your ego has no place in the decision process.”
    “My ego has nothing to do with this,” Hurley shot back with a sour look on his face. “I just let my guard down. That’s all.”
    “No,” Lewis shook his head, “I’m inclined to agree with Irene on this one. You still see her as a little girl, and you don’t give her the credit she deserves. She shows up with this new recruit and because he doesn’t fit into your little box of where these recruits are supposed to come from, you decided to skip steps one, two, and three, kick his ass, and send him packing.” Lewis sat back, took a drink of wine, and then in a calmer voice asked, “Does it mean anything to you that Thomas signed off on this?” Lewis was referring to the deputy director of operations.
    Embarrassed, Hurley said, “I didn’t think of that.”
    “Do you understand the situation you’ve created?”
    Hurley didn’t react at first and then very slowly he began to nod.
    Kennedy was feeling better about her position, but she wasn’t entirely sure what they were talking about and asked Lewis, “What do you mean by situation?”
    “These things have a way of spinning out of control,” Lewis said. “One recruit has some success putting a shiner on an instructor and all of the sudden the rest of them think that maybe they can take a shot. That these guys are human. Throw in the fact that Stan here had to cheat to avoid losing, and we now have a potentially dangerous situation.”
    “How so?” Kennedy asked.
    “Do you think it’s in our best interest to train your boy, send him off, and have him decide that when things get tough, the rules don’t really matter?”
    Kennedy now saw the