Path of the Assassin

by Brad Thor

  “Did your father know you drink?” asked Harvath.

  “I don’t wish to talk about my father. I would much rather talk about us. It has been quite an odyssey, hasn’t it? You have followed me around the world.”

  “Indeed. Macau, Bern, Cairo, Chicago,” said Harvath, rattling off the cities.

  “And let’s not forget Jerusalem,” added Adara.

  Harvath was taken completely off guard. How did she know about Jerusalem? The icy grip of death had been on the back of his neck, and he hadn’t even felt it. He tried not to show his surprise. “Jerusalem? I haven’t been there in a long time.”

  “Please, Agent Harvath. Let’s not play games. At one point I stood right behind you. Had you been paying attention, you could have smelled my perfume. What were you doing there? What was your assignment? Were you sent to kill me? If so, you did a very bad job.”

  “If I had wanted to kill you, you would be dead, believe me,” said Harvath, trying to use the illusion that America knew more than it did to his advantage. “I wasn’t there to kill you. We wanted to know more about your operation. Why don’t we talk about what you and your brother are planning.”

  “We have many plans, Agent Harvath. Many of which are the same, and many of which are not. We are two completely different people.”

  “You don’t seem that different to me.”

  “Oh, yes, we are. And we always have been. When we were very young, my father used to play a game with us called Alquerque. I was quite skilled at it. Hashim was not. It demands a mind adept at strategy, which my brother does not have. I beat both my father and my brother repeatedly. Eventually, Hashim refused to play. My father spent nights on end playing Alquerque with me, virtually ignoring Hashim. It drove him mad with jealousy, and he tried to find other ways to impress my father and gain his attention.”

  “Did he find anything?”

  “No. I always ran faster, jumped farther, and even shot better than he did. The point of the matter is that the only thing my brother surpassed me in was his love for Islam. My father saw it as a means of uniting people. I saw it as a boring, profitless pursuit, and had no time for it.”

  “It would seem your ability to speak English is another area in which you surpass your brother.”

  “My father sent me away to private boarding schools and eventually on to university at Oxford. By living in the West, I learned the ways of the West. Understanding the disposition of your enemy is one of the most necessary elements in conquering him.”

  Something clicked in Harvath’s mind. Like picking a lock, a tumbler had fallen into place. It had something to do with Ari Schoen, but he didn’t know what it meant. He just felt he was onto something. “Your father seemed to think of everything.”

  “I have him to thank for all of this, really,” said Adara as she swept her arm and took in the room. “He realized early on that Hashim’s love of Islam alone would not be enough to carry on everything that he had built, everything that he had worked so hard for. My brother is not a thinker. He is not a planner. He is ruled by his passions, and passions can be dangerous. Make no mistake, though, Agent Harvath. My brother may be a fanatic, but there’s one thing he’s fanatical for above all else—family. He’d die for me if he had to. Of that, I’m sure.”

  “That’s interesting, especially since the organization was put into your care.”

  “Why?” said Adara as she took another sip of wine.

  “Isn’t it obvious? You’re a woman.”

  “That was the added brilliance of my father’s plan. Not only was I the most capable of doing what needed to be done, it was a move that would never be suspected by our enemies.”

  Harvath decided to change tack. “And Israel is one of those enemies?”

  “Of course Israel is one of our enemies. It is our greatest enemy. Israel and all those who support it, especially America,” she said.

  Harvath could actually see her eyes darkening and turning color right in front of him. He had hit a nerve. A big raw one. “So the change in management hasn’t altered the family’s position on Israel.”

  “Nothing will ever change our position on Israel! We were born with a hate for all of its people. It is in our blood.”

  “Nobody is born hating anything. You have to learn to hate. Who taught you? Your father?”

  “You know so little. You know nothing of me and what my life has been. My father tried to teach us about the Jews. My brother took to it faster and with more conviction than I did. I had to learn the hard way.”

  “The hard way?” asked Harvath. “I don’t understand.”

  “It is not for you to understand!” snapped Adara. There was a flash again of her eyes as they throbbed dark as night.

  Calming herself, she turned her attention to Meg Cassidy as the servant reappeared with a large serving dish. “Ms. Cassidy, I can understand your saying no to the wine, but please do not say no to the main course. Having spent most of my life in the West, I am not partial to the dishes of the desert. It is extremely difficult for me to find the ingredients I need here. But, the difficulty only adds to the flavor of the food. If you try it, I think you will find this to be the best truffled lobster risotto you have ever had.”

  Harvath knew it was important for them to keep their strength up, so he answered the question in Meg’s eyes with a nod of his head. The servant spooned out large portions onto each of their odd hand-painted plates, and they began to eat.

  Soon, Adara Nidal began putting direct questions to Harvath about his operation. He knew it was only a matter of time. She wanted to know the extent of the United States’s knowledge, how closely they were working with the Israelis, and who else was aiding them in their hunt to bring down the Abu Nidal Organization.

  Harvath deftly parried and avoided every question. Adara was nearing the end of her patience. “Agent Harvath, you are testing the limits of my hospitality. Only if you cooperate can I provide you with good treatment.”

  “As captives,” said Harvath as he waved off more food from the servant.

  “Not as captives, as my guests. You would be shown every courtesy.”

  “Really? For how long?”

  “Only time would be able to tell.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Agent Harvath, I know Ms. Cassidy possesses limited knowledge of your operation and your country’s overall involvement, but if you do not cooperate with us, you’ve seen that my brother is not above using her to loosen your tongue.”

  “If you or your brother lay a hand on her, I guarantee it will be the last thing either of you ever do.”

  “Idle threats, the last refuge of a beaten man,” said Adara, shaking her head.

  “That wasn’t a threat. It was a promise, and it was anything but idle.”

  Adara pushed herself back from the table and stood. “You do not frighten me, Agent Harvath.”

  “I should.”

  “Nevertheless, you do not. I will give you the rest of the night to think about what I have offered you. Either you choose to cooperate, or I will hand you both over to my brother in the morning and he will do things his way. The choice is entirely up to you. The guards will show you to your rooms.”

  With that, Adara Nidal turned and left the dining room. The guards stepped forward and escorted Scot and Meg back to their rooms. Just as they reached their doors, Harvath turned to Meg one last time to tell her everything was going to be all right. This time, though, it was different. She knew by looking in his eyes that he didn’t really believe it.

  49

  When the guards locked Harvath back in his room, he knew he’d been blessed with the rarest of opportunities—a second chance. He went over the room again inch by inch, searching for anything he could use as a weapon. Out of frustration, he walked into the bathroom for the third time, and that’s when inspiration struck.

  It took several hours of digging at the grout with his fingernails, but Harvath finally was able to loosen one of the large square ti
les and then remove it from the wall. He scored the back of it as best he could by rubbing the tile continuously across one of the metal flanges used to bolt his bed to the floor. Once the tile was scored, he placed the guide cut over the edge of the bed frame and punched down on the tile with his blanket-wrapped fist.

  The tile broke perfectly, leaving a jagged, sharp edge. Harvath worked the bottom of the tile against the metal flange a little longer, fashioning a makeshift handle, which he then wrapped tightly with strips of cloth torn from his sheets.

  He took a moment to sit back on his mattress and admire his handiwork. It wasn’t pretty, but by prison-shiv standards, he had created quite a formidable weapon. Judging from the night sky outside his window, there were only a few more hours until daylight. Harvath didn’t even want to begin to imagine what morning and Hashim Nidal might have in store for them.

  A loose plan had begun forming in his mind. He tried to quiet all of the competing thoughts whirling in his head and focus on how he was going to get them out of this. If anything happened to Meg Cassidy, he’d never be able to forgive himself. She had suffered more than enough already.

  A loud explosion broke Harvath’s meditation and drew him across the room to the window. It was soon followed by another explosion and then another. They all sounded as if they were coming from the other side of the compound.

  At first, Harvath wondered if the terrorists were doing some sort of oddball nighttime training, but discarded that idea when the lights dipped twice and then went out. The room was completely black, except for the faint glow of moonlight streaming in through the window. Harvath heard a commotion in the hallway and crossed from the window to that side of the room in three quick strides.

  He pressed his ear up against the door and heard what sounded like retreating footsteps. He tried the handle of his door, but it was still locked from the outside. He couldn’t be sure if Morrell had arrived to rescue them, but something was definitely happening.

  He kept his ear against the door for several more minutes, but heard nothing. The explosions continued outside, but at wider intervals. They seemed to be coming from different directions.

  With his shiv at the ready, Harvath finalized his plan. It wasn’t the best one he’d ever conceived, but he figured trying it was a lot better than waiting for Hashim and his men to come take him down to the dungeon torture chamber that he knew in his bones this place possessed. If Morrell was somewhere outside, he’d need all the help he could get.

  Scot began pounding on his door and calling out for the guard. He would keep the shiv hidden underneath his shirt until he could get close enough to one of the men and take him out. He would then try and take out the second guard and free Meg Cassidy. He calculated the odds and didn’t like them, but they were a whole lot better than the potential alternative. The bottom line was that Adara and Hashim Nidal were never going to let Harvath or Meg leave the compound alive.

  When he stopped pounding and pressed his ear up against the door again, he heard the faint sound of footsteps. Seconds later there was the sound of the bolt on the other side being drawn. Harvath had had no idea someone was that close. The footsteps had sounded much further off. He decided he would let the guards find him doubled over and maybe they would think he was ill. If he could get at least one, if not both of them, to lower his defenses for just a moment, that would be all the time he needed. He jumped back and readied his weapon.

  The door swung open and blazing flashlight beams pierced the darkness. Then they turned off. Harvath could just make out several large forms entering the room in classic buttonhook fashion. They fanned out and cleared the room and bathroom area in less than five seconds. Harvath had no idea what was happening. He was surrounded by three heavily outfitted men in tactical gear with helmets and armed with silenced Mark Eleven Mod Zero assault rifles.

  “Somebody order room service?” asked one of the men, whose face was covered with a black balaclava.

  Harvath recognized the voice immediately. It was Gordon Avigliano! “Where the hell have you guys been?” asked Harvath.

  “Long story,” replied Avigliano. “I’ll tell you in the car. Where’s Ms. Cassidy?”

  “Straight across the hall.”

  Avigliano handed Harvath a silenced forty-five-caliber H&K Special Operations Command pistol and some extra ammunition. Mounted on the rail beneath the barrel was a SureFire tactical light complete with pressure switch. With the pressure-sensitive switch affixed to the pistol’s grip, you could activate the beam when, and only for as long, as you needed it.

  “You look like shit,” said Avigliano.

  Harvath wanted to say that the Nidal family health spa left a lot to be desired, but he bit his tongue. The men formed an assault column known as the Conga Line, with each operative covering a different angle with their weapons.

  Avigliano drew back the bolt on Meg Cassidy’s door and cautiously pushed it open. Before he knew what was happening, Meg was flying at him with a large vase held high above her head. Since he was decked out in full tactical gear, she couldn’t tell Avigliano was one of the good guys. He tried to blind her with the beam from his flashlight, but it was too late. Meg Cassidy had already locked on.

  Avigliano raised his rifle just in time. The vase shattered against it sending shards of porcelain, water, and flowers in all directions.

  One of Avigliano’s teammates quickly wrestled Meg to the ground. “Ms. Cassidy, my name is DeWolfe. We’re part of the Operation Phantom team. We’re here to get you out.”

  Meg struggled underneath the large man, who had taken her down and pinned her arms behind her back in the blink of an eye.

  “Where’s Scot?”

  “Scot?” asked DeWolfe.

  “Harvath. Norseman,” said Meg as she struggled to break free of the man’s powerful grip.

  Harvath came into the room and tapped DeWolfe on the shoulder. He let up on Meg. “I’m right here. Are you okay?” asked Harvath.

  “Why the hell did he have to do that?” she asked as the men quickly swept the rest of the room.

  “It was for your own protection.”

  “My protection?”

  “It’s just the safest way to do things. They didn’t want you hurting them or yourself. I would have done the same thing.”

  “Thanks. I’ll remember that.”

  “Can we do this later, Meg? Right now, let’s focus on getting out of here.”

  “Roger that,” said Avigliano from behind Harvath. “Let’s beat feet.”

  “Where’s the rest of the team?” asked Harvath as the men prepared to go back into the hall.

  “This is it,” replied Avigliano.

  “What do you mean, ‘this is it’?”

  “We dropped in with the FAVs. Morrell instructed us to follow the truck you’d been loaded into after you got captured. Once we found out where they had taken you, we radioed back. The team was going to rendezvous with us, but Libyan soldiers are crawling all over the place. Nidal must have called them in. Morrell and the guys made it back to their FAVs, but got cut off. They couldn’t get around the Libyans to get here and help out.”

  “So you pulled this off yourselves? Just the three of you?”

  “And against orders. Morrell told us to pull out.”

  “Pull out?”

  “He didn’t want to risk it. He wanted to wait until we had regrouped before doing anything.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t listen to him. Thanks for coming,” said Harvath.

  “The party’s not over yet. I’d hold your thank you’s if I were you. Let’s get out of here first.”

  “Amen. Let’s roll.”

  The team snaked down the hall past the dining room. Suddenly, Avigliano held up a fist, signaling the team to come to an immediate stop. DeWolfe drew up shoulder to shoulder with Avigliano, and when Harvath and Meg’s two guards came running around the corner, DeWolfe and Avigliano popped them both with silenced rounds to the head. The men fell straight to the groun
d, and their rifles clattered on the dark stone floor. Harvath wanted to grab their weapons, but as they weren’t silenced, he knew they couldn’t use them.

  Avigliano waited several seconds before signaling that it was all clear to move out. As they passed the two lifeless forms sprawled on the ground, Harvath felt cheated. One of the guards was the man who had struck him several times while they were in the study. That feeling disappeared two minutes later when they entered the compound’s enormous columned rotunda and Harvath saw a certain man before anyone else did.

  It was the captain of the guard whom he had fought with the day before. The man had an AK-47 and was playing peekaboo from behind a pillar halfway across the room. There was no time to warn the rest of the group. In a fraction of a second, they would be trapped in his line of fire.

  Harvath took a running slide across the slick marble floor and repeatedly pulled the trigger on his silenced H&K. The powerful gun bucked in his hand and tore huge chunks of stone from the column behind which the captain of the guard was hiding.

  Avigliano and the rest of the team fanned out in all directions as they tried to shield Meg Cassidy and simultaneously spot any additional shooters.

  As Harvath’s slide came to a stop, the captain fell forward from behind the shelter of his column. He had taken two bullets to the chest and another through his left eye.

  Once Harvath had replaced the spent magazine, he carefully approached the man and rolled him over. Definitely dead. Harvath retrieved his Rolex and went through the man’s pockets until he found his knife too. “Now, we’re finished,” said Harvath to the dead man. “Say hi to Allah for me, asshole.”

  DeWolfe booby-trapped the body with two fragmentation grenades and rolled the dead man onto his stomach.

  Harvath rejoined Avigliano, who had moved the team toward the entrance of the building. “How are we getting out of here?” asked Harvath.

  “If we go out and pull a hard right, there’s a narrow slot canyon. We’ve got a FAV stashed at the end of it about a mile-and-a-half down.”

  “Won’t there be a little resistance outside?”