by Brad Thor
The Chechen fell to the floor gurgling blood as his associates on the sidewalk searched for a way to make their escape. Ali pointed his gun at a shuttle van approaching the hotel on Lexington Avenue and when the van refused to stop, he put two rounds through the wind-shield, killing the driver, who slumped forward over the steering wheel as the van picked up speed, veered up onto the sidewalk, and slammed into the front of the hotel.
With no regard for the lives of the people inside or for his surviving comrade, Ali began firing in the direction of the gas tank. Sacha barely made it away before the vehicle exploded and sent a roiling fireball deep into the lobby of the Metropolitan.
The mammoth Chechen had a million curses he wanted to hurl at Ali, but he held his tongue. Now was not the time. While the man’s rash actions had almost cost Sacha his life, the al-Qaeda operative had just created the distraction they so needed to escape.
Heading south on Lexington Avenue, they made a left on 50th and kept moving until Ali found a spot where he could remove his balaclava and wiggle out of his tactical gear.
“What are you doing?” said Sacha.
Ali responded by raising his weapon and asking a question of his own. “Where’s your bag, Sacha?”
“What are you talking about? We need to get away from here, now,” he replied.
“The electronics bag you used at all the other locations.”
“It’s gone. I threw it away.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s only one location left. We don’t have to worry about them alerting anyone else.”
“Is that it?” said Ali. “Or is it something else?”
“Something else? Are you mad?” demanded Sacha, as his hand tightened around the grip of his own weapon. “We don’t have time for this. We need to go, now.”
“You knew all along we wouldn’t find Mohammed at those other locations, didn’t you?”
A minute change in expression swept briefly across Sacha’s face. It was all that Ali needed to see. Pulling the trigger, he shot the Chechen right between the eyes.
The Troll must have known all along that Mohammed bin Mohammed was being held at the fifth location! That was why he had insisted on taking the others down first, and Sacha had been a part of that plan from the outset. What a fool Ali had been. The locations had indeed been secret government facilities, but not for the holding and interrogating of prisoners. They had to do with the Troll’s stock-in-trade—information. It explained all the computer workstations and arrays of sophisticated servers. The first four locations were all about collecting information for the man’s evil little empire.
Ali now wondered if the Troll had ever intended for him to succeed. Maybe he and Mohammed weren’t even supposed to leave the city alive. There was no telling what the Troll had planned for them, but Ali was now more determined than ever before that the man would die an unspeakably painful death. It was a mistake to have trusted the Troll, especially after al-Qaeda had discovered he was the one who had given Mohammed’s whereabouts in Somalia to the Americans.
It didn’t matter now, though. Ali had been prepared for this eventuality. In fact, he had envisioned several different outcomes the afternoon might bring and he had prepared for all of them.
Moments later, like a snake that had just shed its skin, Ali returned to the street anew. Matching his pace to the other pedestrians, he proceeded east to one of the many strategically placed hotels he had taken rooms in. Looking more Italian than Arab, he had little fear of being stopped or accosted along the way. The passport he carried would identify him as an Italian businessman and though no one should have any reason to examine him any further than that, he had a complete back-story, or legend as it was known in the intelligence community, which would explain who he was and what he was doing in New York City.
Even though this was an exceptional masquerade, it wasn’t his best. The best was yet to come.
Eighty-Five
On some subconscious level Harvath had understood what the rounds plinking off the side of the shuttle van meant and had been able to knock his team to the ground moments before the explosion.
Now the lobby was engulfed in flames and survivors stampeded in search of exits at the back of the hotel.
Herrington picked up the Troy CQB, slung it over his shoulder along with his own weapon, and gently shoved Harvath toward the back of the hotel. “Let’s get outside and see if we can find these guys.”
Harvath knew that wasn’t going to happen, but he grabbed onto the suggestion nonetheless as a reason to get moving. As he did, the fog of battle began to lift and his adrenaline was replaced by a budding anger with himself for having lost the two remaining terrorists.
Cutting through the hotel gift shop, the team exited onto 51st Street and pushed their way through the crowd of stunned hotel guests.
Signaling Rick Cates to come with him, Bob Herrington suggested the team split up. Harvath nodded his head and took Hastings around the front of the hotel. The damage was bad, very bad, and several civilians lay dead or dying near the still-burning shuttle van. Even if they’d had medical supplies with them, there was little they could have done.
From what Harvath had seen just before the explosion, the terrorists had looked like they were prepared to head south on Lexington and so that’s the direction they decided to go.
He and Hastings crossed the intersection at 50th Street and continued moving south, but to no avail. The remaining two terrorists could be anywhere. They had a decent head start and there was just too much ground to cover on foot. At 49th Street Harvath radioed Bob and asked, “Anything?”
“Nada,” replied Herrington.
Harvath instructed him to come up 48th Street and meet them at the corner in front of the Lexington Hotel. Several of the hotel staff were standing in front passing out bottled water to anyone who needed it. New York was an amazing city. Harvath marveled at how the absolute worst of times in a rather rough city could bring out the absolute best in so many people. Instead of hoarding supplies for themselves or even for hotel guests, which would have been understandable, the hotel was helping anyone who walked by.
Seeing Harvath’s and Hastings’s weapons and realizing they must be plainclothes police, the hotel manager offered each of them extra bottles of water and thanked them for what they were doing. The manager, of course, had no idea what they were doing and, in Harvath’s opinion, how poorly they were actually doing it, but he was grateful for the water as well as the opportunity to rest while they waited for Herrington and Cates to catch up with them.
Less than a minute later a man ran up to the front of the Lexington and relayed to the hotel’s manager the details of the shootout and the shuttle bus explosion in the Metropolitan’s lobby.
Taking their luggage carts from near the front door, the manager and three of his doormen loaded them up with water and ran off toward the other hotel. Harvath watched them leave. When they had disappeared, Harvath realized how utterly exhausted he was. His shoulder was killing him and he probably should have sought further medical attention, but he ignored the pain as best he could and closed his eyes.
Eighty-Six
When Harvath’s eyes snapped back open, he had no idea how long he’d been out. Nearby, Hastings sat on the hotel steps talking with Cates and Herrington as she tried to shake pieces of ash and charred soot from her hair. Across the street, a Greek restaurant had taken over handing out bottled water to thirsty passersby. A group of businesspeople standing near the restaurant even managed a smile as one of them apparently said something worth smiling at. New Yorkers were an amazing bunch, and as terrible as it had been, they seemed to know that this day too would pass.
Harvath was about to close his eyes again, when he felt something vibrating between his elbow and his hip and realized it was his BlackBerry. Pulling the device out of its cradle, he saw the icons indiciating that he had new voicemail and e-mail messages, as well as an incoming call from his boss.
Putting the phone in his le
ft hand, he raised it to his ear and said, “Harvath.”
“Scot, it’s Gary,” replied Lawlor. “I’ve been trying to reach you for the last half hour. What’s going on?”
Scot filled him in as best he could and then fell into an exhausted silence.
“Listen, I may have some good news for you,” said Gary.
“There isn’t much I’d consider good at this point, but go ahead, shoot.”
“The terrorists may be hitting a fifth location not far from where you are right now.”
Hearing that, Harvath sat up straight. “What location? Where? Wait a second. How do you know this?”
“Do you remember all the reports that bin Laden was on dialysis?”
“Of course, it was a rumor based on the Pakistani president claiming al-Qaeda had smuggled two dialysis machines into Afghanistan, right?”
“Exactly. Then one of our Delta Force teams discovered a sterile facility used for dialysis treatments at bin Laden’s Tora Bora base near Jalalabad.”
“So?”
“So they also found a patient log and discovered it wasn’t bin Laden getting treatment, it was Mohammed bin Mohammed, aka Abu Khabab al-Fari.”
“Wait a second,” said Harvath. “M&M? Al-Qaeda’s master bombmaker? He was the head of their entire weapons of mass destruction committee until he disappeared a couple of days before 9/11. Nobody has seen him since.”
“The DIA has,” said Lawlor.
Harvath was floored, and smoke was nearly coming out of his ears as his mind raced to put all of the pieces together. “What’s this have to do with them grabbing Sayed Jamal from us?”
“Apparently, they’re related—as in family. The DIA wanted to use Jamal as leverage in their interrogation of Mohammed.”
“The DIA has Mohammed?” Harvath couldn’t believe it. “Who told you this?”
“Stan Caldwell,” replied Lawlor.
“How does the deputy director of the FBI have that information?”
“According to Caldwell, it was DIA’s chief of staff who coordinated the Joint Terrorism Task Force ruse and then swore the Bureau to secrecy.”
“Based on what? What kind of sway does the DIA have over the Bureau?”
“I don’t know,” said Gary. “That’s all he would tell me. In fact I was surprised to get that much from him.”
Harvath thought back and replied, “That high-level al-Qaeda operative the U.S. took down—the one with the exploding laptop. Do you think that was Mohammed?”
“The timing on it would be right.”
“Then that intercept about the U.S. grabbing a bombmaker and bringing him into America against his will and in violation of international law wasn’t about Jamal after all. It was about Mohammed.”
“I think so,” said Lawlor.
“And you believe he’s here, in New York?”
“I’m almost certain of it.”
“But what’s the connection with the NSA’s deep black intelligence sites?” replied Harvath. “I don’t get it.”
“I don’t get it either. The only one who might have been able to explain it to us is Joseph Stanton, and he’s dead.”
“So how do you know there’s a fifth location and that it’s here in New York?”
“It all comes back to the dialysis machines. We interrogated one of Stanton’s analysts—a young man who worked closely with him on the Athena Program, and he told us that Stanton was very interested in recent sales of high-end units sold by a company called Nova Medical Systems. The name sounded familiar to me, but I couldn’t remember why. When I got back to my office, I did some checking.”
“And?”
“The machines found in the treatment room at the Tora Bora complex were the exact same kind Stanton had his analyst searching for.”
“And did he find any?”
“Yup, and that’s where I think the fifth location is.”
Though some of the dots still needed to be connected, there were enough of them lining up at this point to make Harvath believe that Lawlor really might be on to something. “We’re on it. Where is it?”
“That’s the problem. We can’t touch it.”
“What do you mean, we can’t touch it ?”
“It’s recognized as the foreign soil of a sovereign nation. We’re not allowed in unless they invite us in.”
More bureaucratic bullshit, thought Harvath. All he wanted was an address. He’d let the hacks back in Washington mop up the fallout. “Gary, if that’s where these terrorists are headed, trust me, whatever sovereign nation we’re talking about, they’re going to be begging us to come inside and help them.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. The Libyans can be incredibly stubborn when they want to.”
Eighty-Seven
LIBYA HOUSE
309 EAST 48TH STREET
Mike Jaffe bent down in front of his prisoner and whispered, “You are one heartless bastard, aren’t you?”
Mohammed bin Mohammed looked over at the bloody, slumped body of his nephew but said nothing.
Jaffe stood up and said, “That’s okay, though, because I’m a heartless bastard too. This is a battle of the wills, Mohammed—a clash of the Titans. But I’ve got to tell you, I don’t know if you’ve got what it takes to go the distance. Lately, you haven’t been looking so good.”
Mohammed tried to stifle it, but a chuckle escaped his lips.
Jaffe smiled at him. “The man’s got a sense of humor. How about that? Tell me, Mohammed. All those little boys you’ve buggered over the years, how do you think their senses of humor have fared? Do you think they’re pretty happy-go-lucky? Think they look back on having your flabby, sweaty body hovering over them, pumping away as a character-building experience?”
The smile vanished from Mohammed’s face.
“We found a lot of interesting souvenirs in that house of yours in Somalia,” said Jaffe, “and that got me to thinking. I’ve been going at this the wrong way, haven’t I? Like we say in Arabic, I want you to hold me close to your heart. But how do I get there?”
Walking over to the table near the door, Jaffe reached into a two-pocket olive-drab pouch and removed a small canister with a long piece of clear, flexible tubing attached to the nozzle. Holding it up so his prisoner could see it, he said, “You’ve seen one of these before, right? It’s pepper spray. It’s been around a long time, but it took a very clever man in New Jersey to realize that we’d been limiting ourselves in how we used it.”
Mohammed shifted nervously in his chair.
Unraveling the tubing, Jaffe continued, “Suppose you’re in your hotel room and somebody—a bad guy, let’s say—comes knocking on your door at three in the morning. We know he’s a bad guy, because what nice guy pounds on a door at that hour, right?
“Anyway, you’ve got your pepper spray in this hand, you unravel the hose with the other, slide it under the door, hit the button, and presto! All of a sudden the hallway is uninhabitable. Pretty neat, huh? But wait, there’s more.
“I know the guy who makes these things. He’s sold tons to our government. One night we’re sitting down having a beer and we’re talking about all the different tricks his stuff can do and suddenly it dawns on me. Pepper spray is biodegradable. If it enters your body, eventually it’ll be flushed out with no trace left behind.
“Now, if I’m close to your heart, I figure you’ll tell me what I want to know. The problem is, though, that we’re running out of time. So what’s the quickest way to a man’s heart? Well, in America we say it’s through his stomach, but in your case, I think it’s just a bit lower.”
Mohammed’s gaze dropped to his groin.
Eighty-Eight
I haven’t tried this yet,” said Jaffe as he stuck the tube into his mouth to moisten the tip, “but I gotta believe it’s going to hurt like hell.”
Removing a pair of EMT shears from his pocket, he threw them to Brad Harper and said, “Prep him. I want him as naked as the day Allah made him.”
Even i
f the two Libyan intelligence officers Rashid and Hassan were called back in to do the actual procedure, Harper knew prepping Mohammed for this made him a direct accessory to the man’s torture.
Up until this moment, neither he nor Jaffe had actually touched either of the prisoners. In all fairness, they’d danced dangerously close to the line of what was allowed, but they’d always stayed on the proper side of it. Now, though, Jaffe was telling him in no uncertain terms to jump right across it.
“Hello? Marine?” said Jaffe when Harper failed to act. “Anybody home?”
“Shouldn’t our two colleagues be handling this?” he asked.
“Who? Frick and Frack? They’re on their coffee break. Let’s not bug them. Besides, I think I’m going to add this to my repertoire, and I want to know firsthand how it works.”
“You’re talking about shoving that tube up his…” Harper paused, the image incredibly ghastly even for a marine.
Jaffe looked at him and said, “What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue? You can say it, son. I’m going to shove that tube right up his piss pipe. His urethra, Franklin, if you want to get clinical. Once it’s up as far as it’ll go, then I’m gonna gas him with the pepper spray. If he’s ever had gonorrhea it’ll feel like the world’s best blow job, in comparison to this.”
Looking at Mohammed, Jaffe then asked, “You ever catch gonorrhea from any of those little boys you buggered?” He wasn’t expecting a response, and when none came, he turned to Harper and said, “What are you waiting for?”
The marine’s mind was made up. “With all due respect sir, I’m not able to do what you asked.”
Jaffe’s eyebrows went up and he replied, “What I asked? Son, I didn’t ask you for anything. I gave you a direct order and I expect it to be carried out. Now prep this prisoner.”
“Negative, sir.”
Jaffe was quickly losing his temper. “You want to piss in the tall grass with the big dogs, but you don’t want any to land on you. I’m disappointed, son,” he said as he grabbed the shears back from Harper. “I thought you had more backbone.”
