by Brad Thor
Suddenly, a soldier who had been sleeping on the bunk inside one of the open cells appeared with his AK-47.
“Check the cells!” Harvath yelled.
Gallagher engaged the soldier in the open cell and fired while Harvath took out the remaining soldier sitting on the floor.
Gallagher’s shot was perfect, and the soldier’s weapon clattered to the ground as his muscles seized and he fell like a tree trunk.
But just as suddenly as the first soldier had appeared, another sprang from the cell at the far end of the room bobbling a flashlight and his weapon. Harvath didn’t have a good angle, but he turned his weapon in the man’s direction and pulled the trigger anyway.
The XREP raced from the barrel of his Mossberg, only to clank off the cell door as the man let loose with a burst of fire from his barely level rifle.
As the room erupted in strobes of muzzle flash and a deafening barrage of rifle fire, the rounds ricocheted off the concrete walls.
There was a loud slap when one of them slammed into Harvath’s back as he dove to the ground.
It felt as if someone had walked up behind him and cracked him with a heavy metal shovel. And while the air hadn’t been completely knocked out of his lungs, it had come real close.
Rolling onto his side, Harvath ignored the pain and jacked his final XREP into the chamber. He brought his Mossberg up to fire, but stopped as Gallagher, who had closed on the soldier, bravely stepped around the cell door and fired.
Harvath couldn’t tell if it was one of the dumbest or most courageous things he had ever seen, and he didn’t have time to figure it out. Even though in general the XREPs packed a lot more punch than the conventional, pistol-style TASER and subjects tended to remain out of it for a lot longer, there were always exceptions where the effect could be short-lived.
He sucked in a deep breath and pushed himself up off the floor. Everything still worked, which meant he wasn’t paralyzed, and as best he could tell, he wasn’t bleeding—all good signs.
Gallagher had seen Harvath get hit and wanted to check the extent of the damage. Harvath waved him off. They had too much work to do.
The center cell door was locked up tight, and after they had divested the soldiers of their weapons, hog-tied them with EZ cuffs, and covered their mouths with duct tape, they searched for the keys.
When Harvath found them, he opened Khan’s cell. Despite everything that had just taken place in the room, the al-Qaeda operative sat smugly on the edge of his bed in the dark as if he had expected this all along. Harvath hated the arrogance of the Muslim fanatics, and laying eyes on this one in the eerie green of his night vision goggles, he immediately despised him.
“Stand up and turn around,” Harvath ordered.
“Who are you?” demanded Khan.
“The Tooth Fairy,” replied Harvath as he drew back his hand and struck Khan in the face. “Now get up.”
Harvath had to yank the man to his feet. Once he was up, Harvath spun him around, secured his hands behind his back, and slapped a piece of duct tape over his mouth.
Gallagher had reloaded both of the shotguns, and he handed Harvath’s to him as he exited the cell guiding Khan.
They moved quickly to the hallway where already they could hear the sound of pounding coming from the other side of the stairwell doorway. Harvath knew it wouldn’t be long before the Special Forces soldiers retreated upstairs and dropped a grenade down in an effort to blow the door open. He didn’t want to be anywhere near when that happened.
Once they were all in the mechanical room, Harvath sent Pamir and Marjan up and over the crates while Gallagher used his second chain to secure the door. When that was done, he scrambled over the crates and waited on the other side to assist Khan.
After Harvath climbed into the tunnel and snapped the locks shut behind him, he could see Pamir and Marjan standing in the green glow of their Streamlights. Reassuming control of the prisoner, he told Gallagher to take point and for Marjan and Pamir to follow. Harvath and Khan would bring up the rear.
“Are you okay?” Gallagher asked.
“I’ll be okay,” replied Harvath. “Go.”
Gallagher nodded, and as he and the NDS operatives disappeared into the darkness, Harvath nudged Khan forward. The man refused to move.
Harvath’s back was throbbing and he was in no mood to play around with this asshole. He slid his arm underneath Khan’s, grabbed his trapezius muscle in a vise grip, and lifted up on Khan’s arms.
Pain shot through the terrorist’s body and he stutter-stepped forward to get away from it. Reluctantly, he began walking.
The hardest part of Harvath’s assignment was almost complete. He had Khan. Now all he had to do was get him someplace safe and then coordinate the exchange for Julia Gallo.
His injury notwithstanding, he should have felt much better than he did. But having laid eyes on Khan, Harvath knew that he wouldn’t be able to trade him for Julia Gallo. He couldn’t let an animal like this just return to terrorism. He was going to have to come up with another way, and that meant this thing wasn’t over, not by a long shot.
CHAPTER 31
Harvath peeled off his soft armor and dropped it to the bathroom floor. Pulling up his T-shirt, he turned and looked into the mirror at the softball-sized bruise growing on his lower back. The ricochet had missed his plate entirely and had slammed right into his soft armor. Though the bullet had been flattened out and its impact had been somewhat blunted from having skipped off the wall, his injury still hurt like hell.
Opening up Gallagher’s med kit, he fished out a one-thousand-milligram horse-pill-sized Motrin, affectionately referred to by SEALs as Vitamin M, and chased it down with a long swig from the can of Red Bull he’d brought into the bathroom with him.
Transporting Khan, from the hospital to the safe house Gallagher had arranged for them, had gone exactly as they had planned. After donning their white doctors’ coats, they wrapped the terrorist’s head with gauze, strapped him to the gurney, threw the blanket over him, and wheeled him right out the front doors to their van. Pamir and Marjan had followed, pushing the hand truck loaded down with all the gear. After helping load Khan and the equipment into the back of the van, they had left the grounds the same way they had come in. The hospital had remained quiet the entire time. Never once did they see another soul.
The safe house was in Kabul’s Shahr-e Naw district—home to many of Afghanistan’s opium kingpins and corrupt politicians. The neighborhood was full of newly constructed mansions, impressive even by American standards. Many of Shahr-e Naw’s dubious landowners had built more than one residence and made sizable, not to mention quasi-legitimate flows of income by renting out their additional homes to Westerners. It was exactly such a property that Gallagher had secured for them.
Taking Khan back to ISS’s Kabul compound was out of the question. Not only was it not set up to hold a prisoner, there were too many people who would ask too many questions. Here, nobody asked any questions and the neighbors kept to themselves. Even better, the cops had been paid off by the opium lords to stay out of the neighborhood and anyone who could afford to live here had private security, which meant it wasn’t unusual to see men with guns coming and going at all hours of the day and night.
Only four people knew about the safe house—Flower, Harvath, Hoyt, and Gallagher. Inspector Rashid had offered to act as an escort on their way back, just in case there were any checkpoints, but Harvath had turned him down. Instead, once they were free of the hospital, he had Flower sit with Rashid and monitor his radio. Flower knew the route Gallagher and Harvath were driving and could warn them in time of any potential problems. As it was, things went off without a hitch.
Harvath and Gallagher stashed Khan in a cleverly constructed panic room the safe house’s owner had constructed in his basement. The room was perfect for holding their prisoner. There was a hole in the floor that functioned as a Turkish-style toilet, there were no windows, and the walls and ceilings were solid concr
ete. Mustafa Khan could make as much noise as he wanted and no one would ever hear him.
Gathering up his gear, Harvath stepped out of the bathroom and walked down the marble-floored hallway into the living room. Gallagher was sitting on one of the leather sofas with a bottle of Heineken in his hand, watching the large plasma TV. “Want one?” he asked, holding it up.
“Why not?” replied Harvath as he sat down on the couch.
Gallagher walked into the kitchen and returned with another beer for himself and one for Harvath. “How’s your back feeling?” he asked as he handed over one of the bottles.
“I’ll live.”
Gallagher was silent for a moment. “Listen,” he finally said. “About missing my second target—”
Harvath stopped him. “Those XREPs take some getting used to. The important thing is that you popped that last guy before he could get off a second burst.”
Gallagher nodded and after a lengthy sip of beer asked, “So now what?”
It was exactly the question Harvath had been wrestling with. Technically, he shouldn’t have had any misgivings. His assignment was very straightforward—find Mustafa Khan and trade him for Julia Gallo.
For simply agreeing to undertake the operation, Harvath had already been paid five hundred thousand dollars. Bringing Julia back alive would net him another five hundred thousand dollars. He’d be an idiot to screw that up. All he had left to do at this point was to conduct the exchange and the assignment would be over.
The problem, though, was that Harvath had decided not to let Khan go. The man was a terrorist, and that’s exactly what he would go back to being. There was no reforming these assholes. You had to either lock them up or kill them. Setting Khan free was an option Harvath was not willing to entertain. Not when it meant more people who didn’t deserve to die would die. There was also the possibility that a man with Khan’s background could be behind the next 9/11 or 7/7 attacks. Knowing he had had him and had released him back into the wild if something like that ever happened was not something Harvath could live with. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized he might not have to.
Looking at Gallagher, he asked, “How long do you think it will be before word gets out that the Afghans have lost Khan?”
Baba G rolled the bottom of his Heineken on the armrest, leaving a chain of wet circles. “I don’t know. This is going to be pretty embarrassing for the government. The Afghan president has made a big deal out of how Afghanistan is a nation of laws and how he intended to see that Khan was put on trial. My guess is that they’re going to keep it secret for as long as they can.”
“How long until the Taliban and al-Qaeda know he’s been snatched?”
“With the moles they’ve got everywhere? I’d say twenty-four to forty-eight hours tops.”
Harvath looked at his watch and calculated the time difference with D.C. He owed Stephanie Gallo an updated report. He also needed her to do something for him.
“Do you think we can get Hoyt and Mark Midland to help babysit?” he asked.
Gallagher nodded. “If the price is right.”
Putting down his beer, Harvath pulled out his cell phone. “Good. Call them and tell them to get over here.” Then he added, “And I need to have a powwow with Fontaine.”
“Fontaine? Why?”
“Because now that the Khan part of the operation is over, he’s going to help us get Julia Gallo back.”
CHAPTER 32
TOWN TAVERN, WASHINGTON, D.C.
“So, you want to tell me what we’re doing here?” asked Max Holland as he set his drink down on the table and looked Elise Campbell in the eye.
Holland, a twenty-five-year veteran Secret Service operative, had short gray hair, blue eyes, and hands the size of catchers’ mitts. He had been Robert Alden’s lead protective agent during the campaign and had been promoted to head of his detail when Alden was elected president. At fifty-three, he was the oldest agent protecting the president—something his smartass colleagues were more than happy to point out at all hours of the day and night. In fact, they liked to joke that Holland could never stand too near the military officer who carried the nuclear football for fear that his “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” Life Alert necklace might trigger an accidental launch.
The Secret Service agent took it all in stride. With the flood of young and relatively inexperienced agents that had been transfused into the White House, Holland was their senior in more ways than one. He knew their jokes were only good-natured ribbing. The most important thing was that they respect him, and they did. While Holland would have preferred that the president be surrounded by more experienced agents, there had been such a mass exodus after the election, he could do nothing more than make sure the people that the president did have were the absolute best that the Secret Service could provide.
Quietly, Holland resented the hell out of his colleagues who had taken early retirement rather than serve under President Alden. As far as he was concerned, they were a disgrace to the Secret Service. No matter how much they didn’t care for the new POTUS, they should have still been able to carry out their commitment to protecting the person who held the office. The exodus had destroyed many friendships and poisoned many more to the point that they were as good as ruined.
Looking across the table, Holland wondered what personal problem Campbell was going to unload on him. One of the drawbacks of being the most senior man on the team was that a lot of the agents saw him as a father figure and continually wanted to unburden themselves to him.
The best reason he always held these meetings at the Town Tavern in Adams Morgan was that it was the unofficial home of Chicago sports fans in D.C., and while Campbell droned on about her credit card debt, boyfriend problems, or how she felt her parents didn’t really understand her, Holland, a native Chicagoan who had been married and divorced twice, could keep one eye glued to the Cubs game on the TV behind the bar.
“Do you remember Nikki Hale?” the young agent asked after their food had arrived.
“Sort of,” he said as he took a bite of his bacon cheeseburger. “Why?”
“I heard she was pretty out of it the night she died.”
“That’s what they say,” replied Holland as he held up his empty glass and got a nod from the bartender.
“Did you see her that night?”
“Elise, why the sudden interest in Nikki Hale?”
The great thing about train rides was that they gave you plenty of time to think, and Elise Campbell had done just that as she made her way back from East Hampton. She understood the path she had chosen and she knew it wasn’t going to be easy. That was why she had decided to start with Holland. “I think there’s more to what went on that night than people know.”
“Like what?”
“Like—” began Campbell, before she was interrupted by the bartender, who set a new draft in front of Holland and asked her if she wanted another Diet Coke. Declining, she turned her attention back to Holland. “Like whom she’d been partying with before she sped off.”
“Like maybe the president?” offered Holland as he clamped down once more on his cheeseburger and tore off another bite.
“If they were actually together, then yes.”
“Leave it alone, Elise.”
“Why? What if the president actually had something to do with what happened that night?”
Holland chewed his food slowly and then took a long swallow of his Bud Light. “I’m going to eat my dinner and forget that we ever had this conversation.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Elise, why are you so interested in Nikki Hale’s death?”
Campbell knew from being a cop that when someone answered a question with a question, he was usually avoiding telling you something.
Prepared for the fact that her next question could very well end her career with the Secret Service, she took a deep breath and let it fly. “You were working Alden’s detail the night Nikki Hale died. I want
to know if the president had anything to do with it.”
Slowly, Holland put down his cheeseburger and pushed his plate away. Picking up his napkin, he wiped the grease from his fingers. “In sixty seconds, I’m standing up and walking out of here.”
“Why?”
“Fifty-nine seconds,” he replied as he raised his glass to his mouth and knocked back half of his beer.
Campbell waited for him to put the glass back down and then said, “You’re going to be subpoenaed over what happened.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s going to be a new investigation.”
Holland couldn’t tell if the woman was telling the truth or not. “How would you know?” he asked.
“Trust me, I know.”
Holland laughed, removed two twenties from his wallet, and dropped them on the bar. “See you around.”
Elise put her hand on his arm as he rose from his stool. “I’m doing you a favor, Max,” she said, and then corrected herself. “Actually, I’m doing the Secret Service a favor, a big one, but I can only do it if you help me.”
The elder Secret Service agent closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, and sat back down. “What is this all about, Elise?”
“It’s about a new lawsuit against the president for his involvement in Hale’s death.”
“Who says he had anything to do with it?”
“Stephanie Gallo.”
“Gallo? What are you talking about? Did she tell you this?”
“Not directly, no.”
Holland stared at her for a moment before it hit him. “Jesus, Elise. You overheard the president and Gallo talking about something, didn’t you?”
“This isn’t about me.”
“For the first time tonight, you’re right. It isn’t about you. It’s about the Secret Service and our ability to protect the president. How the hell are we supposed to do that if he won’t let us get close enough to him because he’s worried we’re eavesdropping on him?”
