by Brad Thor
“Is that all of them?”
“All of my ball jokes?”
“Yeah.”
“For the moment.”
“Good,” said Vaughan. “I’d like to concentrate on what’s happening at the mosque.”
“Like Captain Hook.”
Vaughan nodded.
As they rolled up to the stop sign half a block from the alley, Davidson snapped the clip on the metal clipboard wedged between his seat and armrest. “You know what that is?”
“No. What is it?”
“The sound of no hands clapping.”
Vaughan shook his head. “Can we please concentrate on what we’re about to do?”
“So you’re asking me to give you a hand with this part?”
“You know, Levy probably isn’t the one I’m going to beat to death with my shoe tonight.”
“All right. I get it,” said Davidson. “You lawyers have no sense of humor. How fast do you want me to drive down the alley?”
“Fast enough to look like you know what you’re doing and are just cutting through.”
Davidson put his left hand over his eyes and waved his right index finger over the speedometer before landing on a speed. “Okay, got it. Anything else?”
“Yeah. You’d better put your thinking cap on. If this surveillance doesn’t pan out, we’re going to need a really good plan B.”
CHAPTER 37
Vaughan lowered the radio and looked at Davidson. They had just driven out of the alley after dropping all three covert surveillance balls. “Is the placement of the second camera ‘not right’ because it’s not right, or because Levy’s not right?”
“Despite what I told you, he knows what he’s doing. He wouldn’t ask you to tweak it if he didn’t have a good reason.”
Levy’s voice came over the radio again. “Did you guys copy that?”
“Ten-four,” said Vaughan. “We heard you loud and clear.”
“You didn’t pitch it under a Dumpster, but you did manage to get it wedged behind a garbage can,” added Levy. “I wouldn’t be expecting a call from the White Sox this year.”
Davidson looked at him. “Is he pissing you off yet?”
“He’s getting there.”
“So what are we going to do?”
Vaughan really wanted a view of the back door of that building. “I’ll fix it.”
He climbed out of the Bronco and made his way into the alley. It was cluttered with empty boxes, splintered pallets, Dumpsters, and garbage cans. Though he didn’t have a terrific view, he did have lots of good concealment and he carefully picked his way forward.
Just before the building that held the mosque, he stopped and took a slow look around. If he was going to move the camera, he might as well put it in the best spot possible. Now that he was here, he wished he’d brought along a couple of the fiber-optic cameras as well. Having come this far, it would have made sense to go the rest of the way and get the best look at what was going on inside as they could.
The back of the building was covered in gray brick. The basement windows had been painted black and were covered with iron bars. The first-floor windows were covered with newspaper and also covered with bars. A broken lightbulb hung over the back door. The ground was littered with cigarette butts, despite a coffee can filled with sand, which the building’s smokers must have figured was a doorstop.
Vaughan identified a spot for his camera and stacked a few empty boxes around it so it would run less of a chance of being noticed. With a new hiding place ready, he went looking for the hard, black sphere.
There was a row of about five trashcans. The ball was fairly heavy for its size, and when he dropped it out the window he hadn’t expected it to roll very far. They must have been driving down the alley at a higher rate of speed than he had thought.
Pulling a flashlight from his pocket, he leaned over, tilted back the first can, and looked. There was nothing there. He slid out the second can and came up empty as well. It was the same story with the remaining three cans. Where the hell had that thing gone to?
Vaughan studied the alley. There were buildings, cans, Dumpsters, and trash on both sides. The camera could have rolled to the other side, but he doubted it. He had dropped it on the east side of the alley. That was where it had to be.
He came back down the row of cans, tilting each one out, and this time he saw it. Even if his life had depended on it, he couldn’t have made such a one-in-a-million shot. Sitting wedged inside a laundry vent or a drain opening of some sort was his missing surveillance camera. He pulled back the can and bent over near the wall to free the ball.
He was just beginning to stand when he heard something behind him. Vaughan had no idea who it was and had learned a long time ago that discretion wasn’t always the better part of valor. He was in a dark alley in a bad neighborhood on the trail of even worse people. He went for his Glock.
The move was met with a searing pain in his right hand as he was struck with a piece of rebar and his wrist was broken.
Vaughan spun and came up with his left hand in a fist. He connected with his attacker’s jaw and sent him stumbling backward. At that moment, the barrel of a gun was shoved into his face and a flashlight was shined in his eyes.
Though it hurt like hell on his right side, Vaughan raised his hands. “I don’t know who you are, but I’m a police officer.”
The light was taken out of his eyes and, for a moment, he thought he was going to be let go, until he felt his Glock being removed from his holster and saw the man he had punched out gather himself off the pavement and come forward. The man was Middle Eastern. This wasn’t good.
Walking over to him, the man drew his fist back and struck him right in the gut. Vaughan doubled over.
The man grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head up. Vaughan had been in plenty of fistfights in his time and he readied himself either for a knee to the face or for the man to punch down at his head. Either way, he knew it was going to hurt.
Suddenly, he heard a voice from behind his attackers. “This isn’t even a fair fight. You assholes didn’t bring enough guys.”
Vaughan looked past the man with the gun to see Davidson right behind him with his own gun pressed up against the back of the man’s head.
The man holding him by his hair let go and Vaughan straightened himself up. His relief at seeing Davidson was short-lived. Four other men were now standing behind him with weapons pointed right at him.
“Well, it looks like maybe you did bring enough guys,” said Davidson. “Why don’t we put our guns down and settle this like men?”
One of the men stepped forward and struck him in the kidneys with the butt of a rifle. Davidson’s knees buckled from the pain and he collapsed to the ground.
As his gun was taken away from him, Davidson looked up and said, “That’s it. You’re all under arrest.”
The man who had broken Vaughan’s wrist smiled and punched Davidson in the mouth.
Someone gave a series of orders in rapid Arabic and the two police officers were dragged from the alley and into the building.
As the heavy metal door clanged shut, Vaughan wondered what was going to happen, but part of him already knew. All of the bad feelings he’d had since going after Nasiri came flooding back. This was no longer Chicago, and he was no longer a cop or a lawyer working for the family of a young woman who’d been struck by a fleeing taxi. He was a Marine and he was being dragged into a terrorist hellhole worse than anything he had ever seen.
CHAPTER 38
GENEVA
The speed with which Reed Carlton worked was a testament to the efficiency of the private sector. Within hours, he had not only helped plug the holes in Harvath’s plan, he had gotten the train on the tracks and out of the station.
It was agreed that Michael Lee had seen and heard too much to be let go. For the time being, he was going to have to be held on to. And while Peio was a decent field medic, he wasn’t a trauma doc. Lee was stable, but he needed a p
rofessional to look at his wounds. There was an American surgeon based in Paris who was being flown in. She had some sort of relationship with the Department of Defense, but other than that, Carlton didn’t elaborate. All he added was that she was equipped to keep an eye on Lee until they decided what to do with him. Harvath had trouble imagining what a surgeon could do, short of keeping Lee drugged up, but he figured Carlton knew best and let it go. There were several more pressing items that needed to be worked out anyway.
As the attempted murder of the Troll had been orchestrated from within Switzerland, the United States didn’t have any jurisdiction. They also didn’t have any jurisdiction over the alleged murder of Lars Jagland. Not that anyone in the United States cared very much about either. All they cared about were the Rome and Paris attacks. That and Sterk’s material support of terrorism and how it had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of American citizens.
Harvath was a big believer in the merits of enhanced interrogation. He also had no problem with torture when the situation called for it, which this one definitely did. There were very likely more attacks on the horizon, and Sterk possessed information that could help stop them. The key lay in applying as much pressure as was necessary to get her to play ball. Once she began cooperating, the pressure could be dialed back, but the threat of it ramping back up needed to hover over everything they did in order to ensure her continued collaboration.
If they’d had more time to interrogate her, Carlton and the higher-ups at the DOD might not have been so willing to cut a deal. But as it was, everyone, including Harvath, agreed that preventing further attacks was more important than prosecuting her.
Painting Sterk as a covert intelligence source for another agency, an immunity agreement was drafted. So long as she cooperated, Sterk would not be prosecuted.
With that demand met, they set to work on “closing out” Tony Tsui.
Sterk had been dead set against having it happen in the United States. “Too suspicious,” she had argued, believing that it would raise too many questions and sow too many seeds of doubt.
The woman preferred that it take place in an Asian or Latin American country.
That made things difficult for the Old Man. It had to be done correctly and with people he knew he could trust. The best was if it could be done through someone who owed him a favor. There were several of those scattered around the globe, but not all of them could lay their hands on a fresh “John Doe” Asian corpse.
The woman finally agreed to the closeout taking place outside Frankfurt, Germany. The gun battle between Tony Tsui and an elite GSG9 team began shortly before eleven o’clock local time and raged for over forty-five minutes. When the unit finally stormed the small house, news vehicles from every media outlet in Frankfurt were already stacked three deep behind the police cordons. None of them had any clue that the man returning fire from inside the house was not Tony Tsui, but was one of the GSG9 counterterrorism operatives from the German Federal Police force.
As dead bodies do not bleed, the operative inside the house had pumped plenty of fresh blood through the corpse as he simultaneously pumped it full of rounds from his MP5. A forensics team was brought in, and a big show was made of a single laptop being removed from the house. It was placed into an official police vehicle along with the GSG9 team and driven away in one of the longest and most secure convoys any of the media had ever seen. One reporter remarked that not even foreign heads of state traveled with that much security; not even the American president.
The first piece of disinformation was leaked to the popular German weekly Der Spiegel and appeared on their Web site within the hour. German counter-terrorism forces had decided to move on a known espionage figure who dealt in the sale and trade of highly classified state secrets. This figure was reported to have had wide-ranging ties, including several high-level terrorist contacts. The suspect had been shot and killed by German counterterrorism forces.
The next leak went to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which reported that the house, located in a largely rural area, contained a significant stash of weapons and cash. It went on to say that while the victim’s identity had yet to be established, it was believed to be an Asian male in his late twenties or early thirties.
By the time Hessischer Rundfunk Television updated its viewers, the narrative was almost perfectly formed. Along with the weapons and money found at the house of the suspected black market information broker were several passports which the suspect had attempted to destroy. The name of the suspect and any names at all gleaned from the passports were being withheld by German authorities pending investigation.
While the names were being withheld from the German citizenry and its press, they were already being circulated through international intelligence channels. Mixed in among them was the name Tony Tsui.
Finally, Der Spiegel did a follow-up piece identifying the laptop removed from the scene as being suspected of containing sensitive German military secrets. Because the laptop was protected by an extremely sophisticated encryption system, it was very likely the government would seek outside specialists to help crack it.
Other international media outlets were already picking up on the story and running with it. Tony Tsui was as good as dead. That was the easy part.
Reed Carlton was a master spy who had spent a lifetime in the espionage and counterterrorism arenas building a network of friends, contacts, and people who owed him favors, but there wasn’t anything he could do to satisfy Adda Sterk’s second and final request before she would cooperate.
Looking at Nicholas, she said, “I want his dogs.”
Before Harvath could even respond, Nicholas had told the woman to go perform an impossible sex act upon herself and had lunged once more for the wrench.
“Why do you need the dogs?” Harvath had demanded.
“Collateral. As long as I have them somewhere where he can’t get to them, I know he won’t allow anything to happen to me.”
“At this point,” cautioned Harvath, “you’ve got a lot more to worry about from me than you do from him.”
The woman looked at him. “If I have the dogs, it’s in his best interest to make sure I’m safe from everyone, including you. When I’m someplace safe, I’ll make sure the dogs are returned. Take it or leave it.”
It was a discussion Harvath hadn’t wanted to have in front of Sterk so he had called Peio in to keep an eye on her while he walked Nicholas outside to talk to him.
It wasn’t surprising that a dwarf would hit below the belt and Nicholas took the low road right from the minute they exited the warehouse. He said that because Harvath didn’t have children, he would never understand what is was that Sterk was asking. Nicholas not only ranted at him, he threatened to have Harvath killed if he caved to her demands. As far as he was concerned, they were going to have to go back inside and start torturing her again because there was no way he was going to hand over his dogs to her. They would not be used as an insurance policy. End of discussion.
The man’s love for his dogs was one of the things Harvath had long respected about him. He could have berated him for beating Sterk so badly with the wrench. He could have blamed him and told him that’s what he got for taking out his anger on her in such a way, but he didn’t. He had done the same and worse in his life. Sterk had tried to have Nicholas killed and Harvath would have expected anyone in that situation to want revenge.
“We’re not going to give her your dogs,” he said.
“Then what are we out here discussing?”
As Harvath explained his plan, a smile crept across the little man’s face. When they stepped back inside, Harvath watched as Nicholas said a convincing good-bye to his dogs and then turned to face Sterk.
“If anything happens to my animals,” he said, “I will make sure you die a death even you couldn’t imagine. Am I clear?”
Sterk grinned and Nicholas raised his hand to strike her, but Harvath stopped him. “Enough.”
The doctor arrived an
hour later. She rang Harvath’s cell phone to tell him she was there.
He stepped outside the warehouse to find a very fit, very attractive woman in her early thirties. She was leaning against a van identical to the one that was parked inside. Her reddish-brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She had blue eyes, full lips, and a wide mouth.
“I’m Scot,” he said offering her his hand. When she took it, he felt a bolt of lightning pass between them.
“Riley,” she replied, breaking off the handshake when she realized it had gone on a few seconds too long. “I’m sorry it took me so long. That was quite a to-do list I was handed.”
“How’d it go?”
“You can see for yourself,” she replied, stepping away from the door.
Harvath slid it open and looked inside. There were two large crates with two large, white dogs inside. Stacked next to them were boxes filled with Adda Sterk’s personal belongings from her home and office as well as two laptops, three desktop computers, and stacks of portable drives. “That’s what I call a house call. You work fast. I’m impressed.”
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
He stepped back and closed the door. “The Old Man said you do security too?”
“That’s also why they pay me the big bucks.”
Harvath was definitely intrigued, but he didn’t have time to ask the questions that were going through his mind. “We’ll bring your patients out shortly.”
“I’ll be standing by.”
Harvath fought the urge to look back over his shoulder at her as he walked back into the warehouse. Though he couldn’t be completely sure, he was fairly confident that she was watching him.
Back inside the warehouse, he made a beeline for Adda Sterk.
“I’m thirsty,” she said.
“Too bad. I’ll give you one more chance to leave the dogs out of this.”
“No. No dogs, no deal.”
“Fine,” he said as Nicholas handed him his laptop.
