Path of the Assassin

by Brad Thor

  There was a pause, and then Meg came back. “He says he’s got the stomach to eat if Carlson has the balls to go get the pizza.”

  “I knew it,” said Carlson. “He’s fine.”

  “How far out is Big John, Gordo?” asked Harvath.

  “Ten minutes until they’re on-site.”

  “Tell them to hurry up. Any minute now, that other…Scratch that. They’re back.”

  Off in the distance, Harvath could distinctly hear the remaining Alouette helicopter as it lined up for another run down the canyon. Seeing their buddies blown to bits had scared off the pilots of the second craft, but Harvath had known it wouldn’t last. He also knew that this time, the Alouette would come at them with everything it had.

  Just as the helicopter entered Harvath’s field of vision, the pilots killed their lights. The thunder of the rotors reverberated off the canyon walls as the attack helicopter sped toward them. Harvath had anticipated their move and had grabbed the helmet and night-vision goggles DeWolfe had left behind in the FAV.

  He flipped the goggles down, and the night now glowed an eerie green as he got a fix on the speeding Alouette. Its twenty-millimeter canons and machine-gun pods were blazing, and he knew it was only a matter of seconds before the pilots loosed their air-to-surface missiles.

  The two major drawbacks to Harvath’s remaining AT4 antitank missile were that it was made for tanks, not aircraft, and that the weapon had no optics on it at all. Harvath did the best he could to line up his target, and without a second thought, let the powerful missile fly.

  The bright ignition flash, as well as the phosphorus gas stream that followed the weapon as it streaked toward the Alouette, sent the pilots into immediate evasive action. They banked the helicopter into a steep turn, but it wasn’t steep enough. The missile ripped into the craft’s tail section and detonated, shearing away the rear rotor. The Alouette spun wildly out of control for several seconds until it careened into the high wall of the wadi and exploded, sending shards of searing metal in all directions.

  As the Libyan soldiers bolted for cover, Avigliano ran over to Harvath and began yanking things out of the vehicle. “We’re going to have to blow the FAV in place,” he said as he threw a small bag to Harvath. “Big John says uncle Mu’ammar’s got more men heading in our direction, and it looks like they’re scrambling jets out of Tripoli.”

  “Super,” said Harvath. “What else could go wrong?”

  “How about this? With all the heat, Big John can’t land in the wadi. They’re dropping a rope and we’re going out FRIES.”

  “Ask a stupid question…” mumbled Harvath as he unzipped the bag, knowing full well what he’d find inside.

  FRIES was a military acronym for Fast Rope Insertion/Extraction System. Harvath had learned the technique when he was in the SEALs, where it was called SPIE, short for Special Purpose Insertion and Extraction, but no matter what you called it, there was one thing Harvath knew for sure—Meg Cassidy was not going to like it.

  Harvath pulled out two nylon FRIES harnesses from the bag and asked, “How about some Valium?”

  “I thought you were a tough guy,” said Avigliano as he finished placing his explosive charges throughout the FAV.

  “It’s not for me. It’s for our friend, Ms. Cassidy. She’s afraid of heights.”

  “Then I suggest you don’t tell her until the very last possible moment. I’ll cover you with the 7.62. Get over there and get her geared up.”

  Harvath flashed Avigliano a thumbs-up and took off toward the outcropping the minute he heard the heavy machine gun open up.

  DeWolfe was feeling well enough to be taking shots at the Libyans with his Mod Zero and helped lay down enough cover fire for Harvath to get across to their end of the wadi. As soon as he got to Meg Cassidy, he handed her one of the FRIES rigs.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “A harness. Now watch how I put mine on, and do the same,” replied Harvath.

  “What do I need a harness for?”

  “Safety.”

  “Safety for what?”

  “Meg, I really don’t have time for this now. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s people up there trying to kill us.”

  “Scot, what the hell is going on?”

  So much for not telling her, he thought. “The helicopter can’t land in this area. They’re going to lower a rope for us. You clip your harness to it and it pulls you up.”—with everybody else, and we fly away beneath the helicopter like five fish on a stringer, but she’d realize that soon enough. That harness was their only ticket out of Libya.

  “Like when the Coast Guard picks up somebody out of the water and reels them in?”

  “More or less,” said Harvath. He hated not being completely truthful with her, but he knew it was the only way Meg would go along with things.

  “Which one? More or less?” she demanded.

  “Take your pick. Listen, we don’t have time for this. Our helicopter is going to be here in a matter of minutes and we both have to be ready to move, so watch me closely and do exactly as I do.”

  Harvath finished tightening his FRIES harness and inspected it, then inspected Meg’s and DeWolfe’s. Everyone was good to go. He radioed Avigliano, who told him to stand by. Big John was less than a minute away.

  It was amazing to Harvath that he could not yet hear the enormous Chinook, but that was part of the pilots’ M.O. If things went well, you had no idea they were there until they were right on top of you.

  Soon enough, the roar of the big MH-47’s rotors was all you could hear. That, and the deafening fire from the Dillon Miniguns, manned by door gunners on both sides of the helicopter, who were throwing down deadly blankets of fire.

  As Big John made repeated passes to strafe the Libyan soldiers, Carlson ran out into the wadi with pockets full of Chem-lights to mark their makeshift landing zone. Once Avigliano got the word from Big John that he was coming in to drop the rope, the team made their way toward the LZ.

  There was a loud, blowing wind as the Chinook swept in, flared, and then hovered above the wadi. Sheets of sand hitting the rotors gave off sparks making them appear greenish white in the night sky.

  One of the Chinook’s crew kicked the heavy FRIES rope out the door, and Harvath and the rest of the team let it hit the ground and stay there for several seconds. Because helicopters weren’t grounded, they generated a tremendous amount of static electricity, which made it necessary to allow the rope to discharge the current before touching it.

  Loops were staggered along the thick rope, and Harvath took up the first position, where he rapidly locked his harness in with a heavy metal D ring. Out in the open, even with the heavy fire from the door gunners up above, they were all still sitting ducks. Next on the line came Meg, then Carlson, DeWolfe, and finally Avigliano. Once everyone was clipped in, Avigliano blew the FAV with a remote detonator. He then signaled the pilot with an infrared beam, and the Chinook began its quick ascent.

  The key to a hot FRIES extraction was to keep one hand on the rope and the other on your weapon, so you could return fire at the enemy. Harvath, DeWolfe, and Avigliano, along with the gunners in the MH-47, gave the Libyans every single thing they had. With a broken collarbone, it was all Carlson could do to hold on, and it made him madder than hell that he wasn’t able to shoot anybody.

  Meg Cassidy’s sheer terror of the FRIES extraction was rivaled only by her newfound hate for Scot Harvath. By the time they had crossed the Tunisian border, she had vowed to herself not only to never trust him again, but never to speak to him either.

  52

  The new United States Embassy in Tunisia’s capital, Tunis, was located at the intersection of the La Marsa Highway and the road to La Goulette—literally the gullet, which connected the Gulf of Tunis to Tunisia’s main seaport. The sprawling, intricately landscaped compound occupied approximately twenty-one acres and included a chancellery, guardhouses, motor pool, commissary, low-rise office building, warehouse, shops, Marine b
arracks, recreation center, and embassy staff town houses. All U.S. Embassy operations for Tunisia were headquartered there. Some might wonder why the U.S. needed such a large compound in Tunisia, but Harvath knew the answer.

  The embassy served as a major intelligence-gathering center. Its off-limits areas, with raised floors and next-generation satellite listening-and-surveillance equipment, ran at a frenetic pace day and night as operatives tried to stay three steps ahead of everything that was happening in “their corner of the world.” From this forward outpost, the United States monitored, collected, and processed sensitive information regarding most of the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Middle East. Almost the entire staff was on either the NSA’s or CIA’s payroll, and it was no surprise to Harvath that after their extraction from Libya, this was where they had been brought for debriefing.

  It had been intense. Though Harvath tried to interject on his behalf, Gordon Avigliano took quite a verbal beating from Rick Morrell for coordinating the unapproved rescue operation. To Avigliano’s credit, he shielded his two fellow operatives from most of the heat and claimed sole responsibility for disobeying a direct order from his superior. Harvath was seeing, yet again, a different side to the CIA and, in particular, the Special Activities Staff. He was beginning to think that his earlier assumptions about the group as a whole might have been wrong.

  The debriefing was an endless session of finger-pointing and shouting. Harvath was repeatedly blamed for screwing up the operation by going in too close and getting captured. Though Harvath claimed that they had acquired excellent intelligence, Morrell would hear nothing of it. Morrell was certain that even if Abu Nidal had a daughter, there was no way she would ever be put in charge of his organization. At best, the whole scenario, stated Morrell, was established to put Harvath off-guard to get information from him that would be useful to Hashim Nidal.

  Round and round the debriefing went until Harvath was excused from the room so Morrell and his men, along with the Tunisia CIA station chief, could finish the meeting in private. Harvath didn’t like being shut out, but it had also been over forty-eight hours since he’d had any sleep. As he got up to leave, he asked for access to one of the embassy’s other secure conference rooms to make a telephone call.

  “If you’re looking for a secure line,” responded the station chief, “you can use the STU in my office.”

  Harvath wanted a secure telephone unit, all right, but he also wanted to be in a room where he was guaranteed no one would overhear his conversation. “I need to make a report to the president. I’m sure you can appreciate my desire to keep the conversation private.”

  Once an aide had shown him to the secure conference room and the double doors had locked behind him, Harvath made himself comfortable at the head of the table and picked up the STU. He dialed Gary Lawlor’s direct number at FBI headquarters in D.C. by heart.

  “Deputy Director Lawlor’s office, may I help you?” Lawlor’s assistant, a woman Harvath had known for years named Emily Hawkins, picked up on the second ring.

  “Emily, it’s Scot Harvath. Is Gary in?”

  “Hi, Scot. Where in the world are you?”

  “U.S. Embassy, Tunis. I’m on the STU. I don’t mean to be short, but I need to talk with Gary right away.”

  “He’s not here right now.”

  “Where is he? Can you patch me through to his cell?”

  “He’s with the president at the White House. They’re in the situation room. I can put a call in and interrupt if it’s that important.”

  Harvath thought about it for a second. He needed to talk to Lawlor and find out what was going on back in Washington, but the last thing he wanted to do was interrupt a meeting with the president. “Any idea when the meeting is supposed to end?”

  “It could be a while. The FBI arrested three terrorists this morning in D.C. who were plotting to detonate a dirty bomb. Apparently, they were one of Hashim Nidal’s sleeper cells, and there’s reason to believe other attacks were planned to go off at the same time in multiple cities around the country.”

  “Did they say when the attacks were supposed to happen?”

  “The only thing being said right now is that they were in the advanced planning stages and that radioactive and bomb-making materials were discovered at two of the men’s apartments.”

  “As soon as you talk to Gary, please have him contact me at the embassy here.”

  “Will do. You take care of yourself.”

  “You too.”

  Harvath reset the STU and dialed his home phone in Alexandria. The last message on his voice mail was a series of discordant digital tones, which signaled he had messages waiting on his secure cell phone. Once again he reset the STU, and this time dialed his digital phone, which had been left behind in Alexandria, per Morrell’s orders. He had one message waiting. Harvath pressed I, to play the message.

  “Agent Harvath, this is Ari Schoen. I have been trying for some time to get hold of you. I have been hesitant to leave a message, but I think it is of the utmost importance that we speak. Please return my call. You already have my number.”

  Schoen? After what Frank Mraz had said about him possibly being involved with the Hand of God attacks, Harvath had decided to avoid him. But what if he wasn’t involved? What if Schoen was one of the good guys? What if Mraz was wrong? What if Mraz wasn’t telling him the truth?

  Harvath figured there was no harm in calling Schoen back and seeing what he had come up with. He dialed the secure number Schoen had given him. After several rings, the voice with the pronounced lisp answered, “Thames & Cherwell Antiques.” Another tumbler fell into place in Harvath’s mind.

  “Ari, it’s Scot Harvath. I received a message you might have information for me.”

  “You are on a secure line?”

  “Trust me. I could not be any more secure than I am right now.”

  “Agent Harvath,” lisped the voice. “It is good to hear from you. I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to contact me again. I thought we had an agreement. A sort of quid pro quo.”

  “I apologize, Mr. Schoen. I have been…how shall I put it?—very busy of late.”

  “So I’ve heard. You haven’t been pestering any of our mutual friends in Libya lately, have you?”

  Nothing amazed Harvath anymore, especially in the world of intelligence, but even so, Schoen had some incredibly well placed sources if he had already heard about the Operation Phantom attempt in Libya. If Schoen knew enough to mention Libya, then he probably had at least part of the bigger picture. Harvath decided to play along. “Funny you should mention Libya, Ari.”

  “I’m guessing,” said Schoen, “that you were unsuccessful in completing your assignment.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Well, if you had, you would never have bothered returning my call.”

  “Touché.”

  “So you were unsuccessful, then.”

  “Not completely.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We learned something quite remarkable. We have reason to believe that the Abu Nidal Organization is not headed by his son, but by his—”

  “Daughter,” completed Schoen.

  Harvath was completely shocked. “How did you know?”

  “It’s a very long and complicated story, Agent Harvath. Did you actually see her? The one with the silver eyes?”

  “Yes, I did, but how did you—”

  “Where is she now? Is she still in Libya?”

  “She has probably already left.”

  “Do you know where she was going?”

  “We don’t know that yet. Listen, if you knew there was a daughter involved with all of this, why didn’t you say so?”

  “Have you told the CIA what you discovered?”

  “Of course,” said Harvath.

  “And what was their response?”

  Harvath began to see why Schoen might have been holding back on him. “Though they didn’t say it in so many words,
they think its nuts. They don’t believe Abu Nidal would have turned the organization over to a daughter, even if he had one. What’s more, they said none of Nidal’s men would ever take orders from a woman.”

  “And by now you know about both the sister and the brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” said Schoen as a long pause occupied the scrambled phone line.

  “Good? Is that all you can say? This isn’t exactly quid pro quo.”

  “I can say the same for you, Agent Harvath. You have not been fully forthcoming with me either. Where have they gone?”

  “I don’t know. What I do know is that despite what I told them, the CIA is still focusing on Hashim, the brother,” said Harvath, trying to fit the pieces together in his mind.

  “Let the CIA chase him. He’s not the one you want. It’s her.”

  “And you want her too, don’t you, Ari?”

  “I want her more than you will ever know, Agent Harvath.”

  “Then tell me what you know.”

  “It is not much, but maybe it will prove useful. Abu Nidal had a longtime friend and financial partner—an extremely wealthy Moroccan named Marcel Hamdi. We had him under surveillance in Marbella, Spain, where his yacht, the Belle Étoile, left the Puerto Banus two days ago. I’m going to have my people post the surveillance materials for you within a web site we occasionally use.”

  “What does that have to do with Nidal’s daughter?”

  Schoen was a very bright man and no stranger to manipulating people. He was sure that the CIA had informed Harvath that they believed he was connected to the Hand of God attacks. He had to play his hand very carefully. If he could stall Harvath long enough to get the cooperation he needed, then nothing else would matter. And the way to do that was to tell Harvath almost everything he knew.

  “Hamdi is like a second father to her. We intercepted a communication that we thought might have been from her, but couldn’t be sure. Then the Belle Étoile left Marbella heading east. Yesterday, Hamdi stopped in the open ocean and was met by a seaplane. One of his bankers from the Palma de Mallorca branch of Deutsche Bank boarded the yacht with two large suitcases for him. Those suitcases contained over fifteen million U.S. dollars, cash. From what our sources tell us, Hamdi and the Belle Étoile are headed for an island somewhere off the southern coast of Italy.”