Foreign Influence

by Brad Thor

  Harvath nodded.

  “I watched it on the Internet and never understood the outrage. Didn’t it show scenes of Muslim terrorism alongside passages from the Qur’an that call for violence against non-Muslims?”

  “It did,” said de Roon. “Mr. Wilders was holding a mirror up to the Muslim community worldwide and exposing their hypocrisy. They riot over cartoons of Mohammed, but are silent when Muslim terror attacks happen.”

  “And so they want to kill him over a movie that simply shows the truth?”

  The man nodded as if to say, I know. It’s ridiculous. “The hypocrisy is completely lost on them. Remember, Islam is a religion of peace and if you say it isn’t, they’ll kill you.”

  “So you met through Wilders?”

  “Geert was speaking at an event in New York City to raise awareness about Islamic fundamentalism,” said Harvath. “There were several other big-name speakers at the event like Robert Spencer and former Dutch Member of Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

  “A group of bloggers at a site called the Jawa Report, which specializes in taking down Islamist Web sites, uncovered a terror plot against the event. I knew several of the security people involved and when they learned of the threat, they asked me to come in and consult.”

  “And was there actually an attempt on the event?”

  “Yes, but we stopped it.”

  “He means that he stopped it,” said de Roon.

  Casey looked at Harvath. “Is that true?”

  “Some radical American Muslim wounded two police officers and three hotel security guards trying to get into the ballroom. The man was not only heavily armed, he was also wearing a bomb vest. He would have killed all of the presenters and many of the attendees if Scot hadn’t killed him first.”

  “I got lucky,” replied Harvath.

  “You can say that again,” replied de Roon. “If I had snuck out of the ballroom looking for a Red Bull, maybe I would have been in the right place at the right time too.”

  “So that’s how you two know each other?”

  Harvath nodded. “Marty invited me to come over and do some training with his unit.”

  “Dumbest thing I ever did,” said de Roon.

  “Why?” asked Casey.

  “Because,” said Harvath, “when the powers that be saw how good he was, he got promoted. He went from being a special police officer protecting people like Geert and the royal family to AIVD where he now gets to deal with Muslim whack jobs on a daily basis.”

  “And unfortunately today is no different,” added de Roon. “We need to decide what we’re going to do.”

  Scot glanced at his watch. “The attack is supposed to happen during the evening rush, so we’ll have to take him at his office. Describe it to me.”

  De Roon pulled up the file on his BlackBerry and rattled off the salient details. “The office is on the ground floor of a three-story building. Plate glass windows. No rear exit.”

  “How many people working there?”

  “Besides al-Yaqoubi? Three men.”

  “Do we have histories on them?”

  “No, they’re all clean.”

  “Ages?” asked Harvath.

  “Al-Yaqoubi is forty-five and the three other men are forty, forty-three, and fifty-five.”

  “And we have no idea if they have any role in this or not?”

  “No, we don’t. They could be cell members or function in some other capacity within the network.”

  “Which means that if we grab him, we’re probably going to have to grab them too,” said Harvath.

  “Unless being an accountant is al-Yaqoubi’s legitimate cover and these men know nothing about his terrorist activities.”

  “But with no way of knowing, we have to assume that they’re involved. If their firm does the books for the most radical mosque in Amsterdam, we can guess where their sympathies probably lie.”

  “That’s true,” replied de Roon.

  “Is there anything covering the windows?” asked Harvath. “Shutters? Blinds?”

  “No.”

  “Any other rooms?”

  “From what we can tell, there’s a storeroom of some sort and a toilet. That’s all. The entire office is in full view of the street.”

  “Which is a big problem.”

  The Dutch intelligence officer nodded. “Keep in mind that if we’re going to grab all the men in the office, we have to be in and out in less than a minute. Any longer than that and it won’t happen.”

  “Why? Can the locals organize a riot that fast?”

  “They can. They’re experts at it. Believe me.”

  “How do we transport them?” asked Harvath.

  “We can use the van and my agents who are surveilling the office now.”

  “Since we can’t conduct the interrogation at the accounting office, what’s our alternative?”

  De Roon pulled up a picture on his BlackBerry and turned it around to show Harvath. “There’s a Liberian freighter in the port. We arrested the crew two days ago for smuggling. I have two men there now. You’ll have the whole ship to yourself.”

  “How long will it take to get there?”

  “Ten or fifteen minutes depending on traffic.”

  “That’s too long. What do you have closer?”

  “For the kind of interrogating you’re going to want to do, that’s it.”

  Harvath let that sink in. “Our larger problem is that with no back door, we’re not going to be able to get them out of the office and into the van without people seeing it happen.”

  “Exactly. And word travels fast in the Muslim neighborhoods.”

  Harvath was frustrated. No matter how he spun it in his head, he couldn’t come up with the right way to conduct the snatch.

  Casey had already given up on forcefully taking al-Yaqoubi from his office. “Can we draw him out?” she asked. “What are his pressure points? Is he married? Does he have kids?”

  De Roon scrolled through the file and read. “He is a Dutch citizen of Moroccan extraction, Rabat to be exact. According to our records, he has three wives and eleven children, but despite the fact that they receive Dutch social assistance—”

  “Wait a second,” said Harvath. “This guy is an accountant and his family receives welfare?”

  The intelligence man shook his head. “The system has a lot of problems, including the fact that we cannot find any proof of current residency for the family.”

  “None?”

  “No. We have no Dutch medical, Dutch school, or Dutch employment records for any of them.”

  “Which means they’re probably back in Morocco.”

  That gave Casey an idea. “Do we have full names and dates of birth for the family?” she asked as she removed her cell phone.

  De Roon pulled it up and handed his BlackBerry to her.

  “What are you doing?” asked Harvath.

  Casey highlighted a number in her address book and activated the call button. “I know a few people in the Moroccan secret police,” she replied. “If that’s where this guy’s family is, we might not have to walk into his office at all.”

  CHAPTER 56

  Martin de Roon ordered the other two vehicles to hang back. The less attention they drew to themselves, the better. One blacked-out Mercedes cruising through one of Amsterdam’s worst Muslim ghettos was more than enough.

  “There are two pistols in the armrest between you,” he said.

  Casey opened it and Harvath fished out a pair of SIG-Sauer P226s and an extra magazine for each.

  “It goes without saying that you didn’t get those weapons from us.”

  “Understood,” replied Harvath as he handed Casey a pistol and a spare magazine. “Have you heard anything back from Morocco?”

  She checked her phone again. “They’re approaching the house. That’s all I know.”

  Harvath glanced at his watch. They were running out of time. “What’s plan B if the house is empty?”

  “We create a distract
ion on the next block,” said de Roon. “Something big. Something that will draw people out of houses and shops. We pick a building and send in fire trucks and ambulances. We send them in fast and loud. We make police go in and set up barricades to hold people back.

  “As soon as the crowds begin to gather and enough people have gone to see what is happening, we pull up in the van and grab al-Yaqoubi and the other men in the office.”

  “How quickly could you get all of those emergency responders there?” asked Harvath.

  “It would only take a matter of minutes.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be necessary,” said Casey as she read the message that had just come across her phone. “Two of al-Yaqoubi’s wives and several of the children are apparently at the Rabat house. My DST contact wants to know how he should proceed.”

  “Tell him to take the house.”

  “Roger that,” replied Casey, who called her contact in Morocco’s secret police, formally known as the Direction de la Securité du Territoire, or DST.

  Above a wooded gorge, south of Rabat’s diplomatic district at Ain Aouda, the United States had helped Morocco build an interrogation and detention facility for its al-Qaeda suspects. It was run by the Moroccan DST, and Gretchen Casey had participated in several interrogations there over the last two years.

  She put the call on speaker phone so Harvath and de Roon could listen in to the takedown. Commands were issued in Arabic as men could be heard jumping out of cars and pounding on a door.

  In typical Arab fashion a woman could be heard arguing with the men, and when that didn’t work, she slipped into sobbing hysterics, claiming she didn’t know anyone named Khalil al-Yaqoubi.

  Finally, the DST man in Rabat told Casey they were ready to make the call. “How close are we?” she asked de Roon.

  “Four blocks. Less than two minutes out,” he replied.

  “Proceed to the target.”

  The intelligence officer nodded and instructed his operative to take the next left. They stopped there and waited for the second Mercedes. When de Roon’s operative had gotten out, he retrieved several items from the trunk and then slid behind the wheel. Casey joined him up front while Harvath remained in the backseat.

  When they were half a block away from the target, Casey told her contact in Rabat to make the call.

  They pulled up in front of the accounting office just as the phone began to ring. The DST operative had called from inside the house in Rabat. Casey could hear everything from his end, including when he put al-Yaqoubi’s wife and then one of his children on the phone.

  The instructions were very clear. The DST operative told al-Yaqoubi to look out the window. When the accountant confirmed that the black Mercedes had just pulled up, the DST man told him to stand and without saying a word, hang up the phone and exit the office. If he was seen to utter even a single syllable, his family would be killed.

  It was a despicable tactic, but one Harvath had learned long ago to accept. In the war against Islamic fundamentalists, often the only tie greater than the tie to their god was their tie to their families, especially when children were involved. It made Harvath wonder if maybe he was actually better off without children himself. Maybe Tracy had been doing him a favor. He could only imagine how horrifically gut-wrenching it would be to be on al-Yaqoubi’s end of the phone right now.

  They watched as al-Yaqoubi hung up the receiver, stood up from his desk, and exited the office. The team in the surveillance van watched and confirmed that he had not spoken a word to his confused colleagues.

  Walking up to the Mercedes, he opened the door and got in. Harvath pointed the SIG-Sauer at his chest and told him in Arabic to sit down. The man did so.

  “Close the door.”

  Al-Yaqoubi complied. Harvath looked at de Roon and said, “Drive.”

  “Who are you? What have you done to my family?” the man demanded in English. He was far from being frightened. In fact, he was indignant.

  “How do we stop the attack?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  De Roon said, “The surveillance team says the men in the office seem confused. They are all standing at the window trying to figure out what just happened. Should the men go in and get them, or do you want our guest to make the call?”

  This was where Harvath was going to have to take a gamble. If the men in the office were in on the plot, al-Yaqoubi’s sudden departure might seem odd, but they would likely rationalize that something had come up that he needed to take care of right away. As far as they would have been able to tell, he had left of his own free will. Besides, he had climbed into a Mercedes, not a police car. While indeed unusual, and while it may have put them in a state of unease, it wouldn’t have been enough to cause them to ring any alarm bells. Not yet.

  Harvath decided to leave them in the office. “Tell your team to keep watching and to let us know if any of them pick up a landline or cell phone.”

  “Understood,” said de Roon as he radioed the orders to his team.

  “How do we stop the attack?” Harvath repeated to their passenger.

  “I want to know what you have done to my family!” the man demanded once more.

  Harvath nodded at Casey who brought de Roon’s Taser up over her seat, aimed it at al-Yaqoubi’s torso, and pulled the trigger.

  Instantly, he cried out and his body seized as if he’d been overcome by rigor mortis. Harvath waited until it was safe and after tucking his weapon into his waistband, zipped the man’s wrists together behind his back with a pair of Flex Cuffs. Pushing him back in his seat, he patted him down and removed the man’s cell phone, keys, and pocket litter, which he set in a pile on the floor.

  “How long until we’re there?” he asked.

  “Fifteen minutes,” replied de Roon.

  Harvath looked at his watch. “We don’t have that kind of time. We’re going to have to interrogate him here.”

  He wrapped al-Yaqoubi’s ankles with duct tape and then took the Taser from Casey.

  Catching de Roon’s eyes in the rearview mirror he said, “No matter what happens do what I say and don’t stop driving.”

  CHAPTER 57

  You tell me how I stop this attack,” said Harvath, who knew the fear that Moroccans had of their country’s secret police, “or I will tell the DST to begin torturing your family in Rabat.”

  There was a flash of anger across al-Yaqoubi’s face. He looked like he was about to spit at him, so Harvath pulled his fist back and broke the man’s nose.

  There was a crack of cartilage followed by a gush of blood that poured down the front of his shirt.

  “We’ll start with your children,” said Harvath.

  “I don’t believe you,” spat al-Yaqoubi. “Your country and your president forbid you from torture.”

  Harvath smiled. “That’s what you think?”

  “That’s what I know.”

  “Let me disabuse you of that notion right now,” said Harvath, as he told de Roon, “Speed up and do not slow down.”

  He then slammed his fist into the accountant’s stomach and shoved the man, doubled over, onto the floor of the backseat.

  Reaching for the heavy, armored door, he opened it and forced al-Yaquobi’s legs outside.

  “Faster,” he ordered de Roon.

  The intelligence operative complied as Harvath bent down and yelled into the accountant’s ear so he could hear over the rush of the wind whipping past them. “When I let go of this door, it’ll pin your legs against the sill. When that happens, your knees will be forced to bend and your feet will begin dragging along the pavement.

  “At this speed, your shoes will be burned through in a matter of seconds. Your socks will go even faster. Then the flesh from your feet will be ground away. The road underneath this car will eat through sinew and grind down your bones. The pain will be like nothing you have ever known.

  “When I pull you back in, both of your feet will have been eaten away. You w
ill beg me to kill you.”

  “You cannot torture me. The Geneva and Hague conventions forbid it.”

  “Those treaties prevent me from torturing lawful combatants. You’re a terrorist. This is your last chance, Khalil.”

  This time, the man was able to spit before Harvath could stop him. He caught it in the face and it was full of blood. He let the door go.

  They all knew when al-Yaqoubi’s shoes and socks had been burned away because the man began screaming.

  Harvath pushed the door open just enough to pull him back inside. His feet looked like hamburger. “How do we stop the attack? Tell me.”

  Al-Yaqoubi’s head lolled to one side and his eyes rolled up in their sockets.

  “Oh no you don’t, motherfucker,” said Harvath as he juiced him with the Taser again.

  The accountant’s body went rigid, and he screamed even louder this time.

  Once Harvath could get him to focus, he said to Casey, “Tell the team in Rabat to start with his youngest child. Make sure the family, and in particular the children, know that this is happening because their father doesn’t care about them.”

  Casey relayed the orders over her cell phone and then placed it on speaker phone and pointed it toward the backseat so al-Yaqoubi could hear the DST operator addressing his family in Rabat. The children immediately began sobbing and their mothers screamed at the news that they were to be held responsible for al-Yaqoubi’s crimes.

  Harvath watched as the man began to sob. He was breaking. Harvath leaned in to rub salt in the gaping wound that had been torn inside him. “After the DST is done with them, your family’s nightmare will only get worse.”

  The accountant looked at him as if to say How could it get worse?

  “We will make it known to al-Qaeda that you are a traitor and that you gave up the London cell. We’ll then let them know where to find your family.”

  Harvath let that sink in before adding, “The DST is very creative, but al-Qaeda is going to come up with things for your family that no one has ever heard of before. They will make an example out of them that no one will forget.”

  The tears were openly running down al-Yaqoubi’s bloody face.