by Brad Thor
Bob helped Scot unload his gear from the back of the Suburban, but didn’t bother to offer the CIA guys any help. It was obvious he cared for them even less than Harvath did.
Inside the terminal, Morrell and some of the other men were already waiting. He did a head count and once everyone was together, they made their way upstairs to the EgyptAir clubroom.
The room was tastefully decorated with leather sofas and a green-and-blue patterned carpet that was supposed to represent the Nile. Large potted palms stood in every corner, and all of the tables were carved from rich black marble. Scot knew a couple of the other Delta operatives in the room and nodded in their direction. They returned the greeting as the others went about their business.
The Delta Force commander, after a short conversation with Morrell, instructed the room to settle down and then began his briefing. The order from on high was to end the standoff. An Egyptian officer, presumably a member of the 777 unit, translated for his colleagues. The majority of the briefing covered information that had already been relayed to Harvath and the CIA SAS team en route. The Delta commander used a map of the airport and pointed out where his snipers had been placed and where one of the SAS snipers was to be positioned. Teams were assigned for the takedown and team code names were established. The Egyptian, 777 unit would bring up the very rear of the takedown. They would enter opposite the American team assigned to breach the rear of the aircraft, but only after the Americans were already inside.
Harvath couldn’t believe his ears. They were actually going to let the Egyptians get a piece of it! He looked toward Morrell to communicate his disapproval, but Morrell ignored him. Bullet Bob rolled his eyes and then shook his head, demonstrating that he thought as much of the idea as Harvath did. Somewhere, somebody was playing politics and it had absolutely no place in a situation of this magnitude. At least Harvath was going to be breaching the front of the aircraft. He wouldn’t have to worry about a bullet in the back from one of the Egyptians. No, but he might have to worry about one from one of the SAS operatives.
After all of the elements of the takedown had been clarified, the briefing was adjourned and the men were dispatched to their positions. Morrell’s sniper team headed off toward the control tower with an enormous, silenced FNH Hecate II fifty-caliber sniper rifle. With an effective range of over two thousand meters, Harvath knew there wasn’t much that those boys weren’t going to be able to hit.
He and Morrell made their way with the rest of their team down the concourse to an access stairway next to the gate where the hijacked plane was parked. Inside the stairwell, half of the team descended to wait behind a door that gave out onto the tarmac, while the rest of the team went up. At the top of the stairway, just behind the door that opened out onto the roof, Morrell was true to his word. When they got into formation for the assault, Scot was first in line with Morrell right behind him. At least this way, he figured, if he did get shot in the back, he’d know who to haunt.
Harvath tried to relax and focused on his breathing. He looked at the SAS men surrounding him, every one of them cool as a cucumber. In fact, despite the still, warm air of the stairwell, there was not a single bead of perspiration on any of them. Goddamn freaks, Harvath thought to himself. The CIA must have removed their sweat glands—probably at the same time they removed their personality glands.
After drying the moisture from his forehead with the back of his sleeve, Scot glanced at the luminescent dial of his watch. They were T minus ten minutes and counting. When the “Go” command came over their earpieces, both teams would quietly exit their respective doors. The downstairs team, code-named Alpha, would sneak beneath the belly of the plane and, via a collapsible stainless-steel ladder, frame a C4 ribbon charge right beneath the floor of the 747-400’s workout room. Harvath and Morrell’s team, code-named Bravo, had a similar, but more difficult task.
Bravo Team’s duty was to cross the terminal roof and lower themselves down onto the top of the Jetway. One of the SAS members, now hiding inside the Jetway, would quietly maneuver it as close to the aircraft as possible. Using suction cups, the Bravo Team would scale the side of the 747 to the very top, above the upper-deck lounge, where they would frame their own shape charge and enter through the ceiling.
The magic of explosives was that they always sought the path of most resistance. This meant that the charge placed on the belly of the plane would blow straight up and the charge placed on the roof above the upper-deck lounge would blow straight down. The demolition charge itself looked like gray-colored Fruit Roll-Up, only thicker. The goal was to blow right through the skin of the aircraft, through any wires or anything else that might get in the way, and create a big enough opening for the team members to enter through.
Everyone on the ground knew that the longer they waited to attack, the more the hijackers would be anticipating it. Most likely, the hijackers had rigged the main forward door of the aircraft, and possibly several others, with a satchel charge designed to trigger an enormous explosion if anyone attempted to enter through those points. Though the SAS team could easily have blown that door off its hinges from a safe distance away and not gotten hurt, the hijackers were not very likely to foresee the team coming from above and below. This would help give them the element of surprise so desperately needed in an action of this type.
As Alpha and Bravo detonated their quarter-inch ribbon charges, creating a deafening explosion and disorienting pressure change throughout the aircraft, other teams would be breaching several doors on both sides of the plane via mobile staircases on the tarmac.
It was Harvath’s sincere hope that with his superb speed and marksmanship, he could take out as many of the hijackers as possible and prevent the loss of any passengers or crew members.
He opened the stairwell door in front of him just a crack to let in some fresh air and was immediately greeted by the faint sound of automatic weapons fire. Though the sound was heavily muffled, when two windows were blown out on the left side of the upper deck, it became obvious to all that the shots had come from inside the aircraft.
Morrell radioed the Delta commander and relayed what they had heard. Harvath and the rest of the team were deathly quiet. Their hands tightened around the grips of their MP5s as adrenaline coursed through their veins.
Suddenly, without warning, every light in the airport, both inside and out, was extinguished. Someone had jumped the gun.
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Harvath and the rest of the team immediately switched on their NODs. Morrell did the same as he hailed the Delta commander and demanded to know why the lights had been shut off before the agreed to time. Speed, surprise, and overwhelming force of action were the key to a successful takedown, and surprise appeared to have been all but taken away from them.
Finally, the Delta commander radioed back that the 777 unit had jumped the gun and weren’t responding to his orders to hold up. On a separate channel, they had given the command in Arabic to airport staff to kill the lights and were currently zooming across the tarmac on their mobile staircase.
“Fuck!” was the next thing to come out of Rick Morrell’s mouth. Harvath wanted to say, I told you so, but choked it back. Now wasn’t the time.
Morrell finally recovered and gave the “Go” command for the teams to move out. Harvath pushed the door all the way open and, crouching low, ran across the gravel-covered roof, followed by the rest of Bravo Team. He dropped noiselessly onto the top of the heavy Jetway and ran forward as the SAS man inside began maneuvering it closer to the plane.
Before Harvath got all the way to the end, a hail of gunfire erupted from the cockpit and the Jetway stopped moving. He and the rest of the team were sitting ducks. Harvath hit the deck and prepared to return fire, but even with the NODs on, couldn’t see anyone through the foil-covered windows of the cockpit. There was no telling if the hijackers were holding any flight crew in there with them. Harvath didn’t want to risk killing one of the pilots.
Morrell called frantically over the ra
dio to get the Jetway moving again, but his man below was not responding. One of the Alpha operatives reported from below the plane that the Jetway’s navigation station had been riddled with bullets and it looked like they had a man down.
Once again, the first thing that came to Morrell’s lips was, “Fuck!”
This party was going ugly early. It was obvious to Harvath that Morrell was quickly coming to the end of his command ability, and there was no way he was going sit with his ass hanging out in the wind on top of the Jetway waiting for Hashim Nidal or one of his guys to pick them all off. It was time to take control.
Harvath activated his throat mike and called over the radio to the Delta sniper team. “Tick Tock One, Tick Tock One, this is Bravo Team, do you copy?”
“Roger that, Bravo. This is Tick Tock One. We copy,” came the voice of Bullet Bob.
“I’ve got a VUP in the cockpit, but he may have flight crew with him. I need you to pin him down. Throw some of that heavy lead in there nice and high.”
“Roger that, Bravo Team. ‘Very unfriendly person’ in the cockpit, possible friendlies present. I’ll see what I can do to pin him down. Tick Tock One out.”
Harvath next radioed the SAS sniper team to take out the plane’s auxiliary power unit mounted in the 747’s rear fuselage. His hope was that it would disrupt power within the plane and shut off the interior lights.
“Who the fuck is this?” demanded the CIA sniper.
“This is Norseman,” replied Harvath, “now take out that APU!”
“I don’t take orders from you, Harvath.”
“Do it now!” broke in the voice of Morrell, who must have finally found his balls rolling around somewhere on top of the Jetway. Next, he focused his attention on Harvath, “We need to get somebody down to that navigation station and get the Jetway up against the plane.”
“No time,” answered Harvath, who crawled past Morrell and back up the Jetway.
“Harvath! Harvath! What the fuck are you doing?” hissed Morrell.
Scot ignored him and kept crawling until he was alongside the team’s designated demolition man, none other than the operative he had elbowed in the mouth in Jerusalem.
“Give me your demo sack,” said Harvath as he reached for it.
“What the hell for?” he asked, pulling the bag out of Harvath’s grasp.
“I’ve got a plane to catch. Hurry up.”
“No way. That’s not the plan,” responded the man.
Harvath hated it when people refused to cooperate, especially disagreeable people. “So much for team spirit,” he said as he pinned the man’s hand in a sophisticated joint lock, quickly retrieved the demo sack, and slung it over his back along with his MP5. As Harvath was sliding his gloved hands through the specially designed fittings of the black polymer climbing cups, Rick Morrell crawled over.
“What the hell’s going on here?” he asked.
“Beats me,” said Harvath.
“I don’t know what you’re up to, Harvath, but—”
“What we’re up to is making a jump for that plane.”
“Are you crazy?” responded Morrell. “There’s no way we’ll make it. It’s too far away. I’ll get one of the Alpha Team guys up to get us closer.”
“There’s no time. We go now.”
“Bullshit. We go when I say, and I say we get the Jetway closer!”
“Sorry. No can do,” said Harvath as he got up and took off running down the Jetway.
He bounded down the roof of the Jetway and ran as hard as he could while Bullet Bob tore up the hijacked 747’s cockpit with half-inch rounds. At the very end of the Jetway, Harvath pushed off with all his might and flung himself out into space toward the big bird.
When he hit, he hit hard, but true to all the propaganda from Fretwell Industries, the suction cups didn’t fail and he was now adhered to the aluminum skin of the plane. Using the grip and release buttons on the sides of the suction-cup handles, he quickly pulled himself up to the top of the plane. It was similar to the hull climbing he had learned in his SEAL days, only a lot drier. Once atop the plane, instead of turning left and heading toward the bubble, he turned right and ran toward the tail.
Morrell’s voice could be heard immediately through his earpiece. “Harvath! What the hell are you doing? The plan was to make for the bubble and breach there.”
“That was the old plan,” replied Scot. “Now we’re going to do things the way they should be done.”
“Harvath, you’ve gone too far—”
“So have the Egyptians. From what I can see from up here, it’s only a matter of minutes before they arrive, and they’ve got a head start on the Delta boys. Do you want them doing the takedown or us?”
“Us, of course,” replied Morrell.
“Good. Then we do it my way,” replied Harvath as he reached the tail-end section of the airplane and fished the ribbon charge from the demo sack. From what he had memorized about the 747–400’s layout, he knew he was above an open area in economy class with four lavatories and no passenger seating.
“Okay, we do it your way, but I want you to know I am not happy about this,” said Morrell.
“And I am? Just instruct Alpha Team of the change and to wait for my signal.”
“Will do. Hold a sec—”
“What’s up?” asked Harvath.
“It looks like Tick Tock Two knocked out the APU. Behind the window shades the plane has gone totally dark.”
“Perfect. I’m framing my hatch. Have Alpha get ready to blow the belly.”
“On your mark.”
Harvath thought about what his next move was going to be. Every single terrorist between the tail end of the plane and business class was going to be his responsibility once he blew his hole and jumped inside. He pulled what he always referred to as “Man’s best friend,” the roll of duct tape he never traveled without, from his pocket and pulled up the suction-cup devices sitting next to him. Wrapping the tape beneath the handles and around his legs, he quickly secured the devices to the back of his calves. Harvath activated the cups to “grip” and then radioed Morrell. “This is Norseman.”
“Roger, Norseman,” came Morrell’s voice.
“Is Alpha Team on line?”
“Roger that,” came the voice of Alpha Team’s leader.
“We go on my mark. In three…two…one…Now!”
Harvath’s explosion kicked in first, followed by a devastating concussion from the bottom of the aircraft. He pulled out two flash-bang grenades from his hip pouch, jumped across the gaping wound in the plane’s skin, and slammed the suction cups around his calves against the exterior aluminum. With his legs secure, he readied his MP5, chucked the flash bangs into the plane, and swung into the hole headfirst.
He was hanging by his legs with his head pointing toward the floor, so everything he saw was upside down, but a properly tuned laser sight on an MP5 never lied. He took out two hijackers at the rear of the plane, and as two more, about fifteen rows up, began shooting, he nailed them as well.
Harvath pulled his knife from his vest and cut himself free of the suction cups. He swung his legs over his head, hit the ground on his feet, and quickly made his way up the port aisle yelling in English and Arabic for the passengers to get down on the floor of the plane.
Two more terrorists came shooting at him down opposite aisles, and Harvath quickly took them out with perfect shots to the head. A massive explosion rocked the front of the plane, followed by multiple bursts of submachine gun fire as smoke began filling the main cabin. For a moment, Harvath wondered if the front door had indeed been rigged and if maybe Morrell and the rest of Bravo Team had breached it. That was impossible; Harvath had the demo sack and nobody in their right mind would have touched that door with their bare hands. The only way through it was to blow it. It had to have been something else. Harvath looked behind him and didn’t see the 777 unit. Could the Delta boys have beaten them to the plane? He couldn’t tell.
Harvath kept ma
king his way forward. He picked up two more hijackers, armed with Beretta model 12S submachine guns and emergency flashlights, and blew them away. More smoke began to fill the cabin as another explosion and more gunfire rocked the front of the plane. A few passengers had opened emergency window exits and were now fleeing as fast as they could scramble over one another.
As Harvath ran forward, the rows of seats stopped and he found himself in a somewhat open area. Out of instinct, he dropped to the ground, just as shots sliced by his head from the economy-class galley. Within seconds, a wave of smoke passed, and through his NODs, Harvath could make out another hijacker swinging his weapon from left to right, trying to reacquire his target. Harvath didn’t give him the opportunity. He drilled a bullet straight through the hijacker’s brain. Another hijacker appeared right behind him, and Scot dropped him without a second thought.
Harvath couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t seen any of the Alpha Team members working their way toward him. Taking advantage of the lull in the action, he pulled the first of the doubled magazines from his weapon and slammed the second into place. He swung his MP5 from right to left, the laser sight slicing eerily through the smoky darkness. All around him he could hear the screams of passengers as they tried to evacuate the plane.
An explosion from the rear starboard door of the plane signaled the arrival of the Thunderbolt 777 force to the party. The danger factor had just increased exponentially.
Harvath knew the only way to avoid heavy civilian casualties with these jokers now on the scene was to make sure that all of the hijackers had been taken out. With his laser sight arcing from side to side, Harvath crept forward into the business-class section of the plane. Just as in the economy class, passengers were scrambling to get to any available exit. It was absolute chaos.
As he neared the carpeted stairs that connected the lower-level workout facility with the main level and upper deck, Harvath saw two bodies slumped together across seats 16 A and B. Carefully, he rolled the top body off the one beneath. There was blood everywhere. The man on top was of Middle Eastern descent and had been shot in the throat. But by whom? Harvath wondered. He still couldn’t see or hear any trace of the Alpha Team.
