by Brad Thor
“From your staff?”
“No, it was your friend and his partner from the FBI. They were apparently in my office when the bomb went off. Judy was outside at her desk. She’s at the hospital now. Why is this happening? Why can’t he just leave me alone?”
Harvath’s jaw tightened. Two more people he knew had lost their lives. Wherever he went, Hashim Nidal left a trail of dead bodies in his wake. He had a long list to answer for, and Harvath was going to make him pay for every name on it. The sooner, the better.
“Excuse me,” interrupted a young detective who identified himself as Daryn Gasteire. “Who are you and what are you doing in here?”
“It’s okay, detective. This is Agent Harvath. The one I was telling you about.”
“Are you the gentleman who was outside with Ms. Cassidy when the explosion happened?” asked Gasteire.
“Yes, I am,” said Harvath as he fished his Secret Service credentials from his pocket and showed them to the twenty-something detective. Gasteire appeared too young to have already made the rank of detective, especially in a city like Chicago. He had a youthful arrogance to him that grated on Harvath’s nerves. It was obvious the detective was attracted to Meg and had taken it upon himself to watch over her. Despite her beauty and outward show of strength, there was something about Meg Cassidy that made men want to protect her.
The detective also reminded him of Gordon Avigliano, and Harvath remembered that he hadn’t liked the young CIA man at first either. He would try to forgive the detective’s tone, but forgiveness had never been one of Harvath’s strong suits.
“You want to tell me what you saw?” continued Gasteire.
“To tell you the truth, no,” replied Harvath. “The two agents that died up there were friends of mine. I want you to tell me what you have.”
Detective Gasteire tried to be polite. “I’m sorry about your friends, but try to see things from my perspective. A bomb explodes in the office of one of Chicago’s now most-famous citizens, who single-handedly helped rescue the mayor and the CEO of United Airlines during a hijacking, a motorcycle chase ensues down numerous streets and sidewalks, followed by a boat chase down the Chicago River, I’ve got two deceased FBI agents, countless civilian injuries, an untold amount of property damage, and standing right in front of me are a prime witness and coparticipant in the chase, and you want me to fill you in on what I know? Forget it. I am going to ask you again nicely to answer my questions.”
“Or else what?” asked Harvath, his anger getting the better of him.
“Let’s just say, I have a way of easily losing my patience,” replied Gasteire, his smile never faltering.
Harvath fished a card out of his wallet and handed it to the detective. “I’d like to say I appreciate your position, Detective, but my investigation takes precedence here. Call the gentleman on that card and he’ll tell you the same thing.”
“What’s the deputy director of the FBI have to do with an agent of the U.S. Secret Service?” asked Gasteire.
“This may sound rude,” said Harvath as he lowered his voice, put his hand on the detective’s shoulder, and forcibly steered him away from Meg Cassidy, “but it’s none of your fucking business. This is a federal investigation and I don’t have time to dick around with you. Now, I’ve also got Mayor Fellinger’s card in my wallet, and you can feel free to call him if you want, but he’s going to tell you the same thing.”
“The mayor? Bullshit,” said Gasteire.
Harvath pulled Fellinger’s card from his wallet and handed it to the detective. “Now, you decide who the hell you want to call and get on with it. Let’s go. Chop, chop.”
Gasteire removed a cell phone from his pocket and angrily walked to the other side of the lobby to make his calls as Harvath turned back to Meg. “I’m so sorry about all of this, Meg. Even though we were being cautious, we never really believed he’d come all this way after you.”
“If we hadn’t gone out for coffee,” said Meg as her body started to shake again despite the warm, wool blanket one of the firemen had draped around her, “we’d probably be dead right now.” Her eyes were glazed and she was looking off into the distance at nothing in particular.
Harvath put his arms around her and they stayed that way for several minutes until Meg’s shivering began to subside and Detective Gasteire returned, his attitude only slightly improved. “I’ve called both the FBI and the mayor’s office. They told me to give you any cooperation you need. So what do you want to know?”
“What have you and your men been able to piece together?”
“It’s going to be a bit longer before the fire department can get in there and do a thorough investigation, but based on what survivors told us and what the firefighters saw upstairs, the explosion came from Ms. Cassidy’s office.”
“Any idea what caused it?”
“None yet, but we’re working on a pretty good assumption right now.”
“Which is?”
“A lot of deliveries had been flooding Ms. Cassidy’s office—flowers from fellow passengers on the hijacked plane, gift baskets, et cetera,” said Gasteire as he referred to his notes. “According to Ms. Cassidy’s receptionist, several reporters had tried to gain access to her office by posing as delivery people. Word was sent to the building’s front desk that all packages were to be left there and someone would come downstairs from time to time to pick them up. There were to be no visitors allowed upstairs.”
“Makes sense to me,” said Harvath.
“Well, early this morning, a delivery person matching the description of the messenger you chased, arrived with a large gourmet basket, which was left at the building’s front desk. The receptionist claims that when she retrieved the basket and saw that the card bore the return address the mayor’s office at City Hall, she placed it directly in Ms. Cassidy’s office. A call by one of my colleagues has revealed that the mayor sent no such basket, so we’re now assuming that it contained a bomb of some sort.”
“What about the security tapes?” asked Harvath.
“No good. You’re free to look at them, but the suspect never removed his helmet. He kept it on the entire time.”
“Anything else?”
“Units have recovered the stolen motorcycle and powerboat used by the suspect. We’ve impounded them both and will go over them completely for prints, hairs, and fibers. We’ve also got teams retrieving shell casings from where they fell on the streets and sidewalks during your chase.”
“Anything else?” asked Harvath, sensing they’d arrived at yet another dead end in their attempts to stop Hashim Nidal.
“Not really. I was told that after finding the suspect’s boat abandoned near Chinatown, that you phoned your contacts at the FBI and filled them in on what happened. All federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, as well as the border patrol, customs agents, and Coast Guard, have been placed on high alert in connection with a very discreet APB. This has something to do with the hijacking, doesn’t it?”
“Why do you say that?”
“I might look young, Agent Harvath, but I’m not stupid. People like Meg Cassidy don’t normally develop the kind of enemies who blow up offices and then escape in a hail of automatic-weapon fire. Besides, someone just brought me this from the fax in my car,” said Gasteire as he held up the CIA’s sketch of Hashim Nidal. Meg felt a wave of revulsion wash through her at the sight of it.
“The last time I saw this face was during a press conference from Cairo after the hijacking, wasn’t it?” said the detective, pressing Harvath for confirmation of his assumption.
“You could be right, but I don’t suppose the powers that be want that spread around,” said Harvath.
“No, they don’t. The mere mention that a terrorist wanted only days ago for a hijacking in Cairo has somehow managed to slip into this country, blow up an office building in Chicago, and kill two FBI agents would cause widespread panic.”
“If it’s any consolation, the man in that picture is
not who you’re looking for.”
“He’s not? Then why was I sent this?”
“Because that’s who the government believes was behind the explosion this morning.”
“And you’re saying the government is wrong?”
“Yes.”
“Based on what?”
“I saw him.”
“Wait a second. From what I understand, the suspect’s face was completely covered with a helmet.”
“It was.”
“Then how can you say this isn’t the same person?”
“Because I saw his eyes.”
“You what?”
“I saw his eyes. It was a different person. It was someone who works with the man the government is looking for.”
“Are you sure?”
“These are eyes like no eyes you have ever seen before; they’re—”
“Silver,” interrupted Meg, “and they can grow as black as night in an instant.”
Meg had thrown Harvath for a loop. “How did you know that?” he asked.
“On the plane. When Nidal first accosted me, the man with the silver eyes stopped him.”
“How come you didn’t tell anybody this before?”
“I did, but everyone seemed to be more interested in what I saw upstairs in the lounge when I pulled Nidal’s mask off.”
“What exactly did this man do?”
“When he saw what Nidal was trying to do to me, he got very upset. Some angry words went quietly back and forth, and then Nidal backed down—for the time being. I went back to my seat, and it wasn’t until later that he reappeared and forced me upstairs.”
Every one of the passengers on flight 7755 said the brown-eyed man gave all the orders, but what Meg was claiming took place between the two hijackers didn’t make sense. If Nidal was in charge, why did he back down? There had to be something more—something they weren’t seeing. A nagging suspicion began to tug at the edge of Harvath’s mind.
“Did anything else happen? Anything else at all that you can remember or didn’t think was significant?” he asked.
“No. Not really,” she lied. She held back the fact that she had been incredibly drawn to the hijacker’s luminescent silver eyes, had felt herself drowning in them, and that when he touched her cheek with his gloved hand, she felt an odd feeling of awe mixed with gratitude. She had heard it referred to once as Stockholm Syndrome—when hostages begin to identify with their captors, but Meg knew her reaction was something more than that. She was ashamed of her feelings and felt it best to keep them to herself.
“Okay, then I want to focus on getting you someplace safe,” said Harvath.
“Even though I never gave you an answer about what we discussed this morning?” Meg was choosing her words carefully in front of Gasteire.
“That doesn’t make any difference. Your safety is the number-one priority here.”
“So I guess this means I don’t get to ask any more questions,” injected Detective Gasteire.
“I’m afraid you’re right,” said Harvath. “There’s really no more either of us can tell you anyway.”
“Whether that’s true or not, we may never know.”
“Trust me, Detective, if there was anything we knew that could help you, you’d have it.”
“Then I guess that’s it.”
“Not exactly. There is one more thing.”
“What?”
“We need one of your officers to give us a ride.”
“I have to check out the boat over by Chinatown anyway. Where do you need to go?”
“We’re going back to Ms. Cassidy’s place on Astor Street to pack up some of her things—”
“No, we’re not,” said Meg. “We’re going to check in on Judy and the others at the hospital. Then we can go to my place.”
Harvath didn’t like it. “I don’t think that’s such a hot idea, Meg.”
“And why not?’
“Because at least with your apartment, we can send in a team to sweep first. The hospital is too large, too public a place. Our friend might be expecting you put in an appearance there.”
“Then you come up with a way to get us in without him knowing. Until I see my people, I’m not going anywhere else with you.”
Scot could see that she was serious. He thought for a moment and then pulled Detective Gasteire aside. Fifteen minutes later, Harvath and Meg had discreetly climbed into an ambulance via a lower-level loading dock and were on their way. Gasteire met them at one of the seldom-used alley entrances of Northwestern Hospital’s main facility. He provided them with surgical scrubs, long white lab coats, paper hats, and booties. Harvath was happy to get out of his wet clothes. He fastened his belt around his waist so he could continue to carry his gun and placed the rest of his belongings in the deep pockets of the lab coat. Everything else was left in the waiting ambulance.
Gasteire escorted them from room to room. Several of Meg’s staff were already close to being discharged and sent home. She spent time with two men who would probably be staying in the hospital through the week and promised their families that they would receive the absolute best care. Harvath was moved by Meg’s loyalty to the people that worked for her.
The last patient they visited was the most distressing and the one Meg was most concerned about, her assistant, Judy. Meg didn’t want to go into the room alone and so asked Scot to come in with her. Burn Unit rules were some of the strictest around and with good reason, few patients were as prone to infection and the deadly complications it could bring.
Harvath and Meg scrubbed as if they were going into surgery and donned new paper caps, booties, and disposable paper gowns. They were also required to wear gloves and masks—the biggest risk being an infection transmitted via the respiratory system. Detective Gasteire sat outside their door holding Harvath’s SIG and other personal belongings.
At the sight of her good friend, Meg Cassidy began to cry. Because of her charred lungs, Judy was enclosed in a plastic oxygen tent and on a ventilator. The area where the flesh of her chest and arms had been burned away was covered in some places with a thick white salve and in others with wet-to-dry bandages soaked in a special saline solution. Morphine for pain and antibiotics to fight infection were intermingled with her IV fluid. Judy’s eyes were closed, and it was hard for Meg to tell if she was sleeping or not. Harvath, though, knew that the woman was on so much pain medication that she was in a state much deeper than sleep.
All Meg wanted to do was take her friend’s hand and tell her everything was going to be okay, but that was impossible. Nothing was allowed to breach the patient’s oxygen tent. Though they were only inches apart, the inability for them to physically connect made Meg feel as if a chasm hundreds of miles wide lay between them.
She pulled up a chair next to the bed and let the tears roll down her face. She had neither the strength nor the desire to wipe them away. Judy’s chest rose and fell to the mechanical rhythm of the ventilator.
This is all my fault, Meg thought to herself. All my fault.
She remembered Judy’s face floating before her during the hijacking. She remembered wanting to believe that Judy, who kept her crazy life in order and doted on her like a daughter, somehow was her guardian angel. If it hadn’t been for her lousy coffee, I would be lying in that bed right now, or worse.
Meg leaned in as close to the oxygen tent as she dared and whispered, “You really are my guardian angel. I love you so much, Judy. Everything is going to be okay. I promise.”
When Meg Cassidy stood up and crossed the room to leave, she locked eyes with Harvath who had been respectfully standing against the far wall. “I don’t care what I have to do, or where I have to go. That animal has to be stopped. I don’t want him harming another human being.”
Harvath waited before opening the door. “So you’re in?”
“You’re goddamn right I’m in. And you tell the president he can keep his reward money.”
35
“Giant Killer, Giant Ki
ller. This is Stork One requesting clearance,” said the pilot of the luxuriously appointed Falcon 900 passenger jet. The air traffic control moniker was intimidating to say the least, but that was exactly its purpose.
The airspace over the CIA’s highly secretive training facility known as Harvey Point, or more simply the Point, was restricted. The Washington Sectional Chart, which every pilot flying in and around the area would have aboard, specifically stated that clearance to pass through Restricted Area R-5301 could only be obtained by contacting “GIANT KILLER” on the indicated frequency. Failure to do so would result in the scrambling of a contingent of the most-advanced tactical fighter aircraft in the world, Lockheed Martin F-22s, quietly stationed with the Fourth Fighter Wing at nearby Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.
Interestingly, there was no depiction at all of a Harvey Point runway on the sectional chart. This was highly unusual as far as sectional charts were concerned because military airfields were never omitted. Even the CIA’s airstrip at Camp Peary, Virginia, was clearly depicted and labeled.
Stork One was immediately cleared and given instructions on how to land.
The Point itself was just that—a stubby finger of land that curled out into the murky water where North Carolina’s Perquimans River met the Albemarle Sound. Thick-trunked cypress trees overgrown with heavy Spanish moss stood silent vigil over the sixteen hundred acres of poisonous-snake-infested swamp on which the CIA’s facility sat. Locals claimed that the area had once been ruled by Blackbeard the pirate, who had buried his treasure somewhere in the vicinity. It was all the locals could publicly claim, because it was the only thing they were really sure of.
Nine miles southwest of the sleepy town of Hertford, the road abruptly ended at a sign that read, “Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity.” Officially, it was known as a remote Pentagon post, but ever since its inception in 1961, just weeks after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, area residents believed it to be some sort of base for the CIA. Explosions from the Point could be heard and felt for miles around as windows shook and walls sometimes cracked. Strange-looking helicopters often swept in low from the skies overhead, while blacked out transports conveyed unknown passengers quickly through town in the middle of the night. All sorts of old cars, buses, SUVs, and limousines were seen entering on flatbed trucks, only to be carried out later either riddled with bullet holes or burnt to nothing more than charred hulks, or both. The locals had, indeed, pegged Harvey Point correctly, but they didn’t know the half of what went on there.
