Path of the Assassin

by Brad Thor

  “When do we move?”

  “In forty-five minutes out of Dulles. The rest of the team is already here.”

  “Thanks for the short notice. I’ll be lucky if I can grab my toothbrush and still get there on time.”

  “Don’t grab anything. Not even your passport. Everything will be provided en route. United Airlines is flying us in on identical equipment so we can know it inside out by the time we touch down. Come around through ‘general aviation.’ Tell them you’re with the Wright brothers party, and an agent will bring you to the maintenance hangar where the plane is.”

  The Wright brothers? Classic, thought Harvath. “Fine. I am on my way, but, Ricky?”

  “What?” snapped Morrell, obviously eager to get off the phone.

  “Don’t even think about leaving without me.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Scot was ready to say, “Bullshit,” but Morrell hung up before he could.

  Forty-five minutes to get to Dulles? It was bullshit. Obviously Morrell had timed it so it would be impossible for Scot to get there before they took off. It was also obvious that Morrell and the rest of his group had no intention of fully cooperating with him. They were going to do the bare minimum to cover their asses and to hell with Scot Harvath. Well, they had another thing coming.

  Harvath dialed Gary Lawlor’s office at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in D.C. and crossed his fingers that the man was at his desk. He was and answered on the first ring, “Lawlor.”

  “Gary, it’s Scot Harvath.”

  “What’s up?”

  “It looks like we’ve got a lead on Abu, Jr.”

  “So, I heard. Where are you?”

  “At my apartment.”

  “Your apartment? Why the hell aren’t you scrambled and out at Dulles already?”

  “I just got the call.”

  “You what?”

  “Morrell just called me.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “I am very serious. Listen, I need your help. It’s obvious these guys are not playing ball with us. Morrell called me at the very last minute, knowing I wouldn’t be able to make it to Dulles before they took off. He’ll say he called me as soon as he could, but you and I both know that’s BS. I need to be on that flight, Gary. If they’re going to take this guy down, I have to be there.”

  “Hold on a second,” said Lawlor, who withdrew a chart from the credenza behind him. “Do you know Inova Hospital in Alexandria?”

  “Yeah, it’s on Seminary about four blocks west of I-395. Why?”

  “How long would it take you to get there?”

  “I could probably be there within fifteen minutes.”

  “Hold the line again,” said Lawlor as he put Scot on hold and made another call. When he came back on just over a minute later, he had good news. “I called Mitch Norberg at Quantico. They’re going to fly in a Sikorsky S-76 to the hospital helipad. It’s made up to look like a Life Flight bird. It’ll be waiting for you.”

  “Thanks, Gary. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything, just nail that bastard. And remember what I said before about getting along with Morrell? Forget it. We might all be on the same team, but that doesn’t seem to mean much to these people. Keep your eye on them. I wouldn’t trust Morrell or his boss further than I could bowl them.”

  * * *

  The look on Rick Morrell’s face when Harvath walked into the United Airlines maintenance hangar with ten minutes to spare was priceless.

  “What the hell’s he doing here?” said one of the SAS men. “I thought he wasn’t supposed to make it.”

  Harvath looked around at the assembled crew. “Well, the gang sure seems to be all here. Sleazy, Slimy, Drippy, Dopey, and even…hey, what’s up, Doc?”

  The man who had been taking Harvath’s blood pressure on the plane back from Jerusalem and whose eye Scot had dotted was still sporting two butterfly bandages. Now, he simply gave Harvath the finger and walked away.

  “Now that we’re all reacquainted,” Morrell broke in, “let’s get on with it.”

  The United Airlines security, maintenance, and engineering staff, as well as several representatives from Boeing, finished touring the group, explaining everything they could about the specially modified 747-400. The aircraft was identical to the one that had been hijacked.

  In an attempt to keep up with the growing competition from Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic Airways, United had decided to outfit their planes with numerous perks for business and first-class travelers. Besides the standards of video-on-demand, high-speed Internet access, massages, facials and manicures, there was an upper-deck lounge complete with a fully stocked bar and short-order kitchen, as well as a workout facility with showers on the lower-deck level. It seemed the hotter the competition, the more passenger friendly the “Friendly Skies” became.

  When the tour was complete, Harvath, Morrell, and the rest of the team buckled into the overstuffed leather seats inside the lounge behind the flight deck, and the 747-400 was towed out of the hangar and onto the tarmac.

  The engines growled to life, and minutes later the enormous craft was cleared and roaring down the runway. Harvath glanced at the 747-400 fact sheet he had been given when he arrived late on the tour and was awed by the statistics. The tail height of the 747-400 was six stories, each wing weighed 28,000 pounds and measured 5,600 square feet—an area large enough to park forty-five medium-sized cars. The “flexible” cabin layout allowed for changes in class and seating configuration in only eight hours and changes of lavatory and galley locations in forty-eight. The Wright brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk could have been performed within the 150-foot economy-class section.

  After the aircraft had leveled off at its cruising altitude of 35,000 feet and the captain had turned off the Fasten Seat Belt sign, Rick Morrell called his twelve-man team to order.

  “We’ve got a long way to go and we’ll be getting there in a short amount of time, so listen up. According to our flight plan, we should be touching down in Cairo at approximately oh three-thirty. We’ll be landing at the old airport and will be choppered to Mubarak International. Sunrise on site occurs at oh six-twelve. The U.S. has a Combat Applications Group team in country working with the Egyptians, and they are already on-site—”

  “‘Combat Applications Group’?” broke in Harvath. “What is it with you and all the fancy terminology? Why don’t you just call them Delta Force like everybody else?”

  “Gentlemen,” responded Morrell as he gestured toward Harvath, “I’m sure you all remember our docile charge from Jerusalem, Agent Scot Harvath of the U.S. Secret Service. As I mentioned to you before, by order of the president, he is now officially part of our operation. Let’s give him a warm welcome to the team, shall we?”

  The upper deck lounge of the 747-400 was completely silent.

  “Good,” said Morrell. “Now that we have that out of the way, we can continue. As I was saying, there’s already a Combat Applications Group team in country and on-site. As far as the Egyptians are concerned, we are CAG members also and will be there to assist the current CAG team. There are duffels with your names on them in the overhead compartments. You’ll find your uniforms in there.

  “Here’s the scenario. As United Airlines flight 7755 was taxiing to its gate at Mubarak International Airport at approximately fourteen hundred hours local Cairo time, an armed group of hijackers took control of the plane. This was United’s first nonstop flight from Chicago to Cairo and carried a host of dignitaries and VIPs including United’s CEO and the mayor of Chicago.”

  “The mayor? You mean James Fellinger?” asked Harvath.

  “You know him?” queried Morrell.

  “I met him once with the president when we passed through Chicago for a fund-raiser. He’s a decent guy. They say he’s a shoo-in for Illinois governor in the next race and will probably make a serious bid for the White House eventually.”

  “In other words, th
is guy could one day be your boss. Better not fuck up, Harvath,” said one of the operatives.

  “I don’t know who you think you work for,” replied Scot, “but we all work for the president. That includes the CIA, though you guys think you’re above everything.”

  “All right, all right,” said Morrell. “That’s enough. Let’s get back to business. Now, three male passengers have already been killed. Their bodies were dumped from a forward exit door onto the tarmac. We believe two of the men were the sky marshals working the flight. Preliminary reports seem to indicate that the third man was a guy named Lund, one of Mayor Fellinger’s bodyguards. No one has been able to get close enough to the plane to retrieve the bodies, but from what the CAG team can tell, all three were probably dead before they hit the ground.

  “The flight manifest indicates that it took off full with three hundred twenty passengers and twenty-three crew members, including the pilots. Upon landing, the captain was able to get off a message that the plane was undergoing a hijacking and that the hijackers had threatened to blow the cockpit door with C4 if it wasn’t opened. That was the last that was heard of the captain. He had no idea how many hijackers there were. From that moment on, one of the hijackers took over communication with the tower. He threatened to begin killing passengers if anyone came near. There was some chatter in the cockpit and someone named Ghazi was addressed before a second man took over the radio and relayed the major demands. We know ‘Ghazi’ to be the code name for Hashim Nidal and believe it was him speaking. First, he demanded the unfreezing of all Abu Nidal assets being held by Egypt, and then demanded ten million dollars in cash, apiece, for Mayor Fellinger and United’s CEO, Bob Lawrence.”

  “What makes you so sure it was Hashim?” asked Harvath.

  “With twenty plus million dollars in cash on the line, I don’t care how loyal Nidal might think his men are, even the pope wouldn’t trust Mother Teresa with that much money. This is the kind of job you suit up for yourself. Now, there was also an additional instruction relayed to the Egyptians that they were not to connect any external power sources or the air-conditioning.”

  “It’s got to be over a hundred degrees on the tarmac. How are they going to survive without AC?” asked one of Morrell’s operatives.

  “Simple,” answered Harvath. “There’s an auxiliary power unit mounted in the rear fuselage that allows the aircraft to remain self-sufficient in both the power and air-conditioning arenas.”

  “How the hell would you know?” asked the operative.

  “Your mother told me,” said Harvath. “Where do you think I learned it?” He picked up the blue Boeing folder and tapped it with his index finger. “Regardless of what you may think, reading really is fundamental.”

  The operative fumed and Morrell stepped back in to avoid further confrontation. “We’re wasting time here.”

  “So, is the ransom going to be paid?” asked Harvath.

  “Not if we can help it,” answered Morrell, who walked over to the lounge’s audiovisual cabinet, pressed a button to lower the flat-panel monitors, and inserted a DVD into the player. “This footage was taken at O’Hare International Airport yesterday as United Airlines flight 7755 was boarding. Somewhere in here we believe we have Hashim Nidal himself, as well as all of his men. With an aircraft of this size and almost three hundred fifty passengers and crew, he’s going to need a lot of help to keep things under control.”

  Morrell then powered up his laptop computer, which was attached to a portable projector, and beamed a schematic of the 747-400 against the bulkhead. He gestured with a laser pointer as he spoke. “With a full passenger load, at the very least we figure he would need to post a man at the head and tail of each passenger section. That would make ten men, plus one or two extra to help take shifts and watch the crew.

  “As is standard in airline hijackings, all of the window shades have been drawn, and in addition, the hijackers have covered the other windows, such as the cockpit glass, with what looks like aluminum foil,” said Morrell as he punched a key on his laptop and another image was projected onto the wall. “This picture was sent to us by the CAG team. You’ll notice it’s of one of the passenger windows, and there in the middle, there seems to some sort of suction-cup-like device. Apparently these have been placed on windows throughout the plane. We believe these to be motion detectors of some sort—”

  “Those aren’t motion detectors,” interrupted Harvath.

  “What do you mean?” asked Morrell.

  “Motion detectors make no sense. Too many things can set one off, and when it goes off, how are the hijackers going to be able to verify what caused the alarm? Are they going to peek out a window and risk being shot? No. These guys are smarter than that.”

  “Apparently you are too. What do you think we’re looking at, Agent Harvath?”

  “Cameras.”

  “Cameras?”

  “Yeah, they’re called ‘flat-lens’ cameras. Silicon Valley is developing something like these for consumer use. Instead of the cameras that sit on top of your computer monitor like we have now, flat-lens cameras will be built into the actual monitor frame. It would be simple to rig some of those up as remotes. All you would need is a power source of some sort, maybe something as small as a watch battery. From what I can see, that cord hanging down is most likely an antenna. Hashim’s probably got a man somewhere in the plane monitoring the feeds.”

  “Have you ever seen one of these flat-lens cameras in action?”

  “The Secret Service was playing around with them a little bit, but the quality left a lot to be desired. It was hard to distinguish depth of field, but for a single airplane alone on the tarmac, even one close to the gate, having these all over would be like having a thousand eyes.”

  “If they are remote cameras, couldn’t we block their signal?”

  “You could try, but not knowing exactly what frequency they’re on, you’d never be absolutely sure you had them blocked.”

  “There’s got to be some way around them.”

  Harvath thought a moment before responding. “There might be.”

  “What is it?”

  “Nighttime. The cameras are not very good in low light. If you extinguished all of the airport lighting, the hijackers would be blind.”

  “And we’d have all of our guys using night-vision goggles. Good, we’re making progress.”

  “What do you mean by ‘all of our guys’?” asked Harvath. “Will it be us and the Delta team, or are the Egyptians going to want in on this one too?”

  “As a courtesy, President Mubarak has mobilized Egypt’s counterterrorism unit.”

  “Which unit exactly?” asked Harvath, leaning forward in his seat, deep concern etched across his face.

  “Unit 777.”

  “Unit 777? Thunderbolt Force? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “I am not kidding you, Harvath. Like I said, President Mubarak did it out of courtesy to the U.S.”

  “Courtesy to the U.S.? Morrell, do you conduct all of your operations with your thumb up your ass, or is this one just special?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the Egyptians and their 777 unit. Do you really think they’re going to sit idly by and let us run the show? What, if anything, do you know about this group?”

  “They’re Egypt’s crack unit, formed by a presidential directive to conduct counterterrorism and hostage-rescue operations.”

  “Crack, my ass. They’ve had heavy training from the German GSG9, the French GIGN, and even our very own Delta Force, but they’re far from being a crack unit. They can’t even hold a candle to Delta.”

  “Which is why they are simply standing by.”

  “You really don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?”

  “Harvath, if you’ve got a point, then get to it, or else shut your trap.”

  “November twenty-third, 1985? Egypt Air flight 648? Ring any bells?”

  “Not reall
y.”

  “On the evening of November twenty-third, 1985, one Omar Ali Rezaq and two other men, all card-carrying members of Abu Nidal’s Fatah Revolutionary Council, boarded an Egypt Air flight out of Athens. Shortly after the plane took off, these three charmers produced weapons and demanded that the captain fly the plane to Malta. There was an Egyptian plainclothes sky marshal stationed on board, and a gunfight broke out. One of Rezaq’s men was killed and the sky marshal was wounded.

  “When the plane arrived in Malta, Rezaq demanded that it be refueled; and when the authorities refused, he announced that he would start shooting a passenger every fifteen minutes until the tanks were topped off. The authorities thought he was bluffing, but he wasn’t. He shot two Israelis and then three Americans, dumping all of their bodies out the front door onto the tarmac.

  “The next day, Unit 777, stormed the plane. It was one of the worst fuckups in counterterrorism history. These guys went in with guns blazing, and fired indiscriminately in every direction. They set off some sort of an explosive device, which sent the plane up in flames. When all was said and done, fifty-seven passengers were dead.

  “Fifty-five of those deaths were attributed to the Egyptian 777 unit. When you take all of this into consideration, throw in Egypt’s brand-new airport, add a ton of media attention, and the fact that this hijacking is very likely being carried out by the son of the guy who ordered the November ’85 job—do you really believe the Egyptians are going to sit back and let us run the show?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, our mission is the identification and neutralization of Hashim Nidal. Period. What the Egyptians do is their business. As long as they don’t get in our way.”

  “Well, that’s commendable, but what about the passengers?”

  “Not our priority.”

  “‘Not our priority?’ How the hell can you say that? That plane is packed with hostages, most of whom are Americans. We have a duty to try to rescue them.”

  “We have a greater duty to make sure Hashim Nidal is eliminated. America does not want another World Trade Center.”

  “I don’t want one either, but we have to at least try to rescue the passengers.”