Path of the Assassin

by Brad Thor

  The courier began to reach into his breast pocket, and Harvath pointed the gun back between the young man’s eyes. “Ah. Ah. Ah. Remember what I said about leaving by the window.”

  “It’s just a release form, honest. Jesus, this has been hard enough already. Besides, if I was going to pull a gun on you, I would have done it while your head was in the refrigerator.”

  “Good point,” said Harvath as he slowly released the hammer and put his pistol on the kitchen counter. He accepted the form and signed it as he said he would, “Samuel Adams.”

  “Wait a second,” said the courier. “I was told I could only release these documents to Mr. Scot Harvath.”

  “And you have.”

  “But the name here—”

  “Will be perfectly clear to your superior when you report back. Now pop the top and give me what you got.”

  The courier deactivated the locking system and withdrew a thin manila envelope, which he handed to him. It was sealed and stamped, “Top Secret. Agent Scot Harvath U.S. Secret Service Eyes Only.”

  Harvath walked the young man into the hall.

  “So, are you going to be graduating to real fieldwork soon, Gordo?”

  “I already have.”

  “Well, just try not to get any of the wrong people killed, okay? You have a good day now,” replied Harvath as he turned back into his apartment and kicked the door shut behind him.

  He sat down on his couch and spread the contents of the file on the coffee table. There was a brief history of Abu Nidal followed by a series of photos from scenes of terrorist attacks attributed to his son. Theories and possible strategies occupied the space of a two-page “brainstorming” memo that was long on speculation and short on actual facts.

  Lawlor had been right; there wasn’t much in this file that Harvath hadn’t already been told. At least, though, he was now truly operating off the same page as everyone else. After reviewing the material for a fifth time in as many hours, he ran it through his shredder and then burned the remains in a metal garbage can he had placed in his bathtub.

  As Harvath got ready for bed, he thought about Ari Schoen. What role did he really play in all of this? Could he be useful? Was he involved with the Hand of God? Was Schoen telling everything he knew? Was the CIA? That was the trouble with this business. You never could tell who was telling the truth and you never knew whom to trust. Everyone was suspect.

  Harvath gathered the bottle caps off his pillow and threw them into the garbage can beneath his desk. He unwrapped and ate one of the chocolates before climbing into bed. He was dead tired and looked forward to a good night’s sleep. As he crawled beneath the covers, his feet came to an abrupt halt.

  Morrell had short-sheeted his bed.

  16

  Meg Cassidy was never much for following the crowd, but when United Airlines’s flight 7755 touched down at Cairo’s new Mubarak International Airport, she found herself caught up in the emotion of the moment and joined right in with the wave of applause that swept through the sleek new 747-400 jetliner.

  She then leaned her head back against the stylish leather business-class sleeper seat and offered up a prayer of thanks. It was easily the greatest PR coup of the year. Somebody up there liked her. At twenty-seven, the attractive, blond public relations whiz kid was already being called a PR maven, and owned one of Chicago’s fastest growing and most successful agencies. Her offices were located in the swanky Beckwith Realty loft building on Hubbard Street, not far from the best seafood restaurant in town, Shaw’s Crab House. She had just purchased a new summer home on Wisconsin’s famed Lake Geneva, and Today’s Chicago Woman and Crain’s Chicago Business were planning cover stories on her within the next month. The editors had sought her out for her street smarts and business acumen, though the fact that she was a dead ringer for Meg Ryan hadn’t hurt either.

  What she had accomplished was truly amazing. Competing against agencies three times their size, Meg and Cassidy Public Relations had beat out every comer to win the United Airlines local account. The first assignment they were handed was the opening of United’s new service to Cairo—the first nonstop route from Chicago to Cairo. Meg had worked tirelessly with United’s ad agency and helped to develop a fabulous campaign that included a tag line seen on billboards and buses all over town, “From the heart of America to the heart of the Middle East. No One Unites the World Like United.” But she didn’t stop there. If this was going to be a Meg Cassidy event, it had to be bigger than big.

  Meg was aware of Chicago’s numerous sister cities across the globe and was able to convince the new mayor, Jim Fellinger, that Chicago needed a Middle Eastern sister city and that Cairo was the perfect choice. Once those wheels were put in motion, Meg worked tirelessly along with United’s CEO, Bob Lawrence, to make sure that United’s inaugural Chicago-to-Cairo flight would be the first plane to touch down at Cairo’s new Mubarak International Airport. And it was. In a matter of minutes, when the doors of the 747 opened, Chicago mayor Jim Fellinger would be the first to deplane, followed by United CEO Bob Lawrence to shake hands with the host of waiting Egyptian dignitaries.

  Meg took a moment and let the relief flow through her. It had been seriously touch and go for a while. With the increased violence in the Middle East, United had thought about scrapping the route altogether, but Meg had hung in there. She convinced all of the players that the new route was a symbolic connection between the people of America and of the Middle East. United knew the demand was there and that the route would be profitable, but the shadow of international terrorism always hung low over the horizon and was an unspoken fact at almost every meeting. Meg had assured her clients that when they had hired her, they had hired the best and that she would make sure their PR was nothing short of exquisite—and it was.

  Tickets for the flight sold well, but just to make sure it went out full, Cassidy Public Relations had developed a series of brilliant, high-profile contests for vacations to Cairo. The media exposure United had gained was far beyond anything they could have hoped for. The airline’s publicly steadfast refusal to pull out of their new route to Cairo in the face of escalating Mideast violence was hailed by peacemakers everywhere as the type of determination and commitment necessary for the world to not only live, but to thrive in peace. There was no doubt that Meg Cassidy had done an extraordinary job. Her crowning achievement was helping to coordinate a cultural exchange of Egyptian exhibits between Chicago’s Field Museum and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Flight 7755 was carrying several large crates of artifacts, returning to Egypt for the first time in over one hundred years.

  Meg had spent a good portion of the trip in the upper-deck lounge with members of the press, including two of her favorite travel journalists, Bernard Walsh and Georgia Bormann. She had answered all of their questions, which covered everything from United’s newest routes and aircraft, to the possibility of additional cultural exchanges between the U.S. and Egypt. By the time the plane touched down, she was exhausted. She had been burning the midnight oil for two weeks straight before the kickoff flight and was looking forward to getting to her hotel, opening a bottle of wine, taking a long hot bath, and crawling into a nice, soft bed for a much deserved rest.

  Her reverie was broken by the sound of a sudden commotion. What could possibly be going on? We’re almost at the gate, Meg thought to herself.

  A group of men came running up both aisles from the plane’s economy section and stopped not far from Meg’s seat. One of the flight attendants had unbuckled himself and approached the men to see what was the matter.

  In a flash, the mood in the plane turned from celebration to terror as one of the men attacked the flight attendant, and several of the passengers began screaming.

  Two figures clad in black jumpsuits and wearing ski masks appeared on the stairwell that led from the lower-deck fitness area and began handing up a wide array of automatic weapons to the men who had run up from economy class. From the first-class section of the plane, Meg saw one of M
ayor Fellinger’s Chicago police bodyguards approach. She tried to warn him with a tilt of her head toward the stairwell, but it was too late. One of the masked hijackers saw the bodyguard first, withdrew a silenced pistol and fired two shots into his head, killing him instantly.

  Meg couldn’t see it, but behind her, a plainclothes sky marshal rushed up one of the aisles from the rear of the plane with his gun drawn, yelling for the men to put down their weapons. Another sky marshal drew his weapon and ran up the opposite aisle. They were subdued by two “sleeper” hijackers who had remained in their aisle seats until the sky marshals had made themselves known. The hijackers had short, black plastic-composite knives, known as CIA letter openers, which they had easily smuggled through security. With a well-rehearsed up, in, and twist motion of the knives, each sky marshal was quickly dispatched.

  Now the entire plane was in bedlam. Screams of terror could be heard coming from all directions. Several of the hijackers made their way through the cabin and confiscated the onboard stun guns.

  The masked hijacker who had killed the mayor’s bodyguard motioned to one of his men with his weapon. The man understood the command, pushed past the handful of flight attendants who were seeing to their fallen comrade, and activated the 747’s public address system.

  In near perfect English he addressed the plane’s passengers, “Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to make it off of this plane alive, you will cooperate fully with our instructions. We have already demonstrated how far we are prepared to go. Out of respect for the women and children, we hoped to spare you this spectacle, but no doubt you now know we are in control of the plane and are fully armed. We guarantee you that we are prepared to use our weapons. As Allah is merciful, so are we. Obey our instructions and no one else will be killed. We ask that you remain in your seats and that those of you sitting near a window lower your window shades completely.”

  Though many of the terrified passengers only began to sob harder at the confirmation that the plane had been hijacked, they all complied with the instructions and those by the windows lowered their shades.

  The hijackers, who were all now heavily armed, took up strategic positions throughout the cabins. Mayor Fellinger’s second bodyguard was identified, handcuffed, and led upstairs, where he was knocked unconscious and unceremoniously left in one of the lavatories in the upper-deck lounge.

  Knowing that the pilots would stay barricaded behind their reinforced and bulletproof cockpit door, the hijackers contacted them on the intercom system and told them that if they didn’t open the door within three seconds, it would be blown off with C4. The pilots had little choice but to surrender. It was the right move. The hijackers had enough explosives to not only knock down the door, but create such a blast that it would likely kill everyone inside the cockpit. Before opening their door, though, they had managed to get a message out that the plane was under siege.

  Knowing that many of the passengers, especially the Americans, would be emboldened by the resistance of the September 11 passengers who had helped prevent the fourth pirated plane from reaching its target, the hijackers wasted no time in demonstrating to everyone on board who was in control.

  The lead flight attendant, who had been attacked and badly beaten in the initial takeover, was dragged up and down the aisles as a visual deterrent to any passengers thinking about trying any heroics. The message was sent loud and clear, We are in control here.

  It was all making Meg sick to her stomach. She had been the victim of an attempted rape several years before and had never been able to escape the memory of it. The only child of a Chicago Police Academy training officer, she had felt that the attack had somehow been her fault—that she should have seen it coming and been better able to fight it off. The experience had shaken her to the core. Afterward, she took self-defense classes at the academy as well as extensive firearms training. Her father had given her a nine-millimeter handgun, which she always kept loaded beside her bed. Though many women might have caved in and lived in fear for the rest of their lives, Meg had used the experience to make her stronger.

  A hijacker in the cockpit relayed orders to the tower. The Jetway was to remain retracted, and neither the external air-conditioning nor the external power source were to be attached. The plane was to be immediately refueled, and if anyone other than the refueling crew approached the aircraft, hostages would be killed.

  In order to demonstrate their seriousness, the hijacker exited the cockpit and shouted down the stairs from the upper deck. His colleague waiting below motioned to two other hijackers and together they deactivated the water slide and opened the 747’s large side door. With contemptuous kicks, they shoved the bloody, lifeless bodies of the mayor’s bodyguard and the two sky marshals out the door and watched them tumble through the air before landing in a sickening heap of snapping bone on the tarmac below. Their message delivered, they retreated inside and closed the door.

  The hijackers next used sheets of aluminum foil and duct tape to cover the cockpit windows and those of any exit doors that didn’t have shades. Throughout the cabins, passengers were watched at gunpoint as other hijackers shoved their way into rows and temporarily raised window shades only long enough to place dark, flat, suction-cup-like devices with long yellow tails against the Plexiglas.

  The passengers were in shock and were sure the hijackers were wiring the plane with explosives. Meg’s seatmate, Bernard Walsh, was positive that was what was happening and, under his breath so as not to attract the attention of the hijackers, said as much to her.

  “Relax,” Meg whispered back to him. “As long as we do what they say, we’ll be okay.”

  “No we won’t. If we stay calm, it just makes it easier for them. Remember nine-eleven? I don’t care how brutal these people are. We have to do something, or we’re all going to die.”

  Meg was gripped by fear and had no idea if her seatmate was right. There was no telling if the hijackers were suicidal, or had an agenda. She prayed to God that they did have an agenda because that seemed the only way that they would make it out of this mess alive. Not only was the CEO of United Airlines a passenger on the flight, but so was the mayor of Chicago. Certainly whatever the hijackers wanted, they would get.

  At the moment she completed that thought, Meg looked up to see one of the masked hijackers staring at her. His eyes seemed to bore right through her. At first she thought he had noticed her talking and was going to make an example of her. Then she noticed something else in his eyes, something she had seen only once before in her life and hoped never to see again. Getting out of this situation alive might not be as easy as she had thought.

  17

  Scot Harvath had a lot of enviable talents, but the ability to kill time was not one of them. Patience in battle, he could handle; patience getting to battle was another thing entirely. This morning he had awakened, early and gone for a run. When he returned to his apartment he scrambled some eggs for breakfast and then set about some of the “to do” list of chores he had been putting off.

  While organizing his desk, he came across a photo of Sam Harper, his mentor at the Secret Service, who had been killed during the president’s kidnapping that winter. There were also photos of Agents Maxwell, Ahern, and Houchins—all killed along with Harper trying to protect the president and his daughter. Not a day went by that Harvath didn’t remember the promise he had made to avenge the deaths of each and every American who had lost their lives protecting or trying to recover the president. Seeing the photos only reminded him more acutely of his promise.

  During his extended leave of absence, tracking down the men responsible for those killings, something inside Scot had changed. He kept telling himself that soon it would all be over. He would go back to his new job at the White House, and things would eventually settle down and return to normal. He knew, though, that he was lying to himself. He couldn’t go back to that life. In fact, he was amazed that he had stayed in it as long as he had. Claudia had been the final straw. If it had worked
out between them and she had wanted to settle down in D.C., maybe he would have felt differently. Maybe he could have ignored what had been chewing at the edge of his conscience for so long. He knew he was an excellent Secret Service agent, but he also knew that his talents were better suited to a different arena. His mind was made up. Actually, it had been made up for some time, but now he could finally see the decision for what it was. He was avoiding the White House, and the president, because he knew that after he completed this last assignment, it would be time for him to move on. He had no idea where; he just knew he couldn’t go back to doing what he had been doing for the Secret Service.

  Old habits died hard, and Scot found himself trying to relax his mind and pass the time the way he and his SEAL teammates had in their mission ready room while they waited to be deployed. Though it seemed like a lifetime ago, in reality it had only been a few years, and Scot found the old routine comforting. From the footlocker in his closet, he removed a stack of videocassettes with his name handwritten across each sleeve. He had watched Cool Hand Luke and was halfway through The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly when his pager went off.

  He grabbed the phone and dialed the number from the pager’s display.

  Morrell answered on the first ring, “Name?”

  “Harvath.”

  “It looks like Hashim Nidal has come up for air.”

  “Where?”

  “Cairo.”

  “What’s the scenario?”

  “Hijacking. Lots of passengers.”