Blowback

by Brad Thor

  “You asked Faruq,” said Harvath.

  Abdullah, his head hung low, responded, “Yes. It was Faruq, and along with the Wahhabis, they succeeded in turning my son against me.”

  There was still a piece of the puzzle Harvath felt he was missing—a piece that was the key to helping all of the others floating around in his mind to fall into place. “I know this is a delicate question, and please forgive me, Your Highness, but it is something I have to ask.”

  “What is your question?”

  “From you, your son can claim direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad.”

  “This is correct.”

  “Hamal’s mother. You said she was a foreigner. What country was she from?”

  For a moment, the Crown Prince seemed to be at peace, as if he was reliving happier memories from long ago. “We met in Cyprus. A man who had been involved in selling weapons to my brother, King Fahad, for our army introduced me to her. I was a young man filled with the world and forgetful of my responsibilities. She was the most beautiful creature I have ever seen. I was completely captivated by her.”

  “Her nationality, Your Highness,” repeated Harvath. “What was it?”

  “Turkish. She was of Ottoman descent.”

  “And the man who introduced you? The man who had been involved in selling weapons to your brother?”

  “Ozan Kalachka.”

  And with that, Harvath knew who the new caliph was going to be.

  NINETY

  C rown Prince Abdullah agreed to Harvath’s next request on two conditions. The first condition was that he promise not to kill his son. The second was that Harvath, Reynolds, and Alcott convert to Islam before being allowed to enter the holy city of Mecca.

  While the second condition came as a surprise to Jillian, Harvath and Reynolds both knew it was not the first time the Royal Family had made such a demand. When the French GIGN team had gone in to help liberate the holy city from radical fundamentalists in the 1970s, they had done so not as French Catholics, but as newly converted followers of Islam.

  Once the trio’s temporary conversion, which had been conducted on the tarmac of the King Fahad Air Base, was complete, they climbed aboard a Royal Air Force UH60 Blackhawk helicopter with a team of National Guard Special Warfare soldiers. Dressed in urban camouflage, the Special Warfare team was as serious a group of men as Harvath had ever seen. Outfitted with 5.56mm M4 automatic rifles, 9mm H&K MP5 sub-machineguns and two M700 sniper rifles, it was obvious the Crown Prince’s handpicked team had come to play.

  A half mile out, the chopper’s pilot radioed to make sure the local security forces were in place and, upon confirmation, swooped in low and fast on their approach.

  As they neared the gates of Prince Hamal’s sprawling compound in an industrial neighborhood on the dusty outskirts of Mecca, the two AH64 Apache attack helicopters escorting them opened up with a barrage of Hydra 70 rockets and an onslaught of heavy lead from their 30mm cannons.

  Hamal’s security force was taken completely by surprise, but they soon regrouped and mounted their response. Battle-hardened mujahadeen who had fought in Afghanistan against both the Soviets and the Americans, the men responded instantly.

  Before anyone in the Blackhawk knew what was happening, the early morning sky was filled with the contrails of rocket-propelled grenades. Though their pilot did his best to avoid being struck, one of the rockets found its mark, shearing off the rear tail rotor. The pilot yelled for everyone to hold on as the helicopter was launched into a violent spin.

  The bird whipped around in circles as it lost altitude and the packed earth of Hamal’s main courtyard rushed up to meet it. Harvath could hear gunfire, but with the enormous force created by their spin, it was all he could do to hold onto his breakfast, much less figure out where any of the shots were coming from.

  The Blackhawk slammed into the ground, its spring-loaded safety seats barely breaking their fall or, in Reynolds’s case, not breaking his fall at all as his leg snapped on impact.

  To the Special Warfare unit’s credit, they were out the door, weapons hot, before Harvath even had his seatbelt unfastened. Rushing over to Reynolds, he tried to assess the man’s injuries, but Reynolds waved him away.

  With Jillian’s help, he pulled Reynolds as gently as possible from the wreckage of the helicopter and propped him against the mud wall of a large cistern.

  Jacking a round into Reynolds’s twelve-gauge, Harvath handed it to her and told Jillian to keep her head down as he took off after the Special Warfare team.

  Ten feet away he heard the roar of Reynolds’s Remington and turned in time to see one of Hamal’s security people fall facedown into the dirt. Behind a cloud of blue gunsmoke, Alcott flashed Harvath the thumbs-up. Obviously she had learned something from shooting rabbits in Cornwall. That was the second time she had saved his life.

  Getting his head back in the game, Harvath raised the MP5 provided to him by the Special Warfare unit and slipped into the main building. By the time he reached the team members inside, he had three tangos to his credit, and with every man he dropped, he quickly searched each face for any resemblance to the two militants they were still looking for.

  Inside, Harvath followed the unit as they plowed through wave after wave of gun-toting jihadis intent on defending whatever or whoever lay at the center of the compound.

  By the time they reached the center, the team was faced with a set of stairs going up to the second story, as well as a door that led somewhere down belowground. Knowing Arab terrorists’ penchant for using tunnels, especially when under siege, Harvath chose to accompany the part of the team that was going below grade.

  When several rounds into the lock and hinges of the reinforced door failed to open it, the unit’s demolition officer placed a shape charge on the door and backed the rest of the men up. Turning away from the blast, he hit a button and blew the door right out of its frame. Another team member then threw two flashbang grenades down the narrow stone staircase.

  The flashbangs detonated in quick succession, and the men poured down the narrow opening with the demo officer and Harvath bringing up the rear.

  The stairway was incredibly tight, so tight in fact that men had to twist sideways at points just to squeeze through.

  Five more feet, and the earsplitting echo of new weapons’ fire filled the confined space along with the thick smell of cordite. With no way to see what was happening, Harvath had no choice but to follow the man in front of him.

  Suddenly, though, there was a reverse surge as the men turned and tried to run back up the steps. Before Harvath could move, he heard a series of horrible screams as an explosion detonated and a searing orange wave of fire consumed the stairwell.

  He dropped to the ground as the flames roared overhead and tried to protect his already burned face.

  After the flames dissipated, Harvath checked himself to make sure he hadn’t been injured. Deciding everything was okay, he stood and then noticed that the rest of the team hadn’t been so lucky. Based on the condition of the demo officer in front of him, he could see that they all had been riddled with shrapnel. Either someone had tossed a grenade into the stairwell or the Special Warfare unit had triggered some sort of antipersonnel device. Either way, somebody was trying very hard not to be followed.

  After grabbing the demo officer’s bag of charges and flashbangs, Harvath carefully picked his way over the other bodies and down the rest of the stairs. When he reached the bottom, he found himself in a tight subterranean chamber. Haphazardly placed beams supported the low ceiling and a string of bare lightbulbs lit a long passageway stretching out in front of him. Just as Harvath had suspected, Hamal’s complex was indeed attached to a tunnel system.

  With the ringing in his ears somewhat subsided, Harvath could make out the sound of one or more people moving somewhere up ahead. His MP5 up and at the ready, he crept cautiously forward, mindful of the potential for further booby traps.

  The height of the tunnel rose and fell
over a distance of what felt like two or three city blocks. It finally dead-ended at a wooden ladder that stretched upward toward some sort of trapdoor. If someone had been in the tunnel, this was the only way they could have gone. Readying his weapon, Harvath used his free hand to steady himself as he climbed the ladder. He gently applied pressure to the trapdoor, but it wouldn’t budge. He tried once again, harder this time, but still it refused to move.

  Searching through the demo bag he had taken, he found another shape charge. Affixing it to the bottom of the trapdoor, he attached the necessary amount of det cord, climbed back down into the tunnel, and got as far away as possible. Plugging his ears and opening his mouth to equalize the pressure change that was about to take place, Harvath counted to three and blew an enormous hole right through the middle of the door.

  He removed two flashbangs from the bag, scrambled up the ladder, and pitched them up and into the room above him.

  Immediately after their detonation, Harvath sprang off the top rung of the ladder and into what could only be described as some sort of bottling plant.

  Terrified by the explosions and the heavily armed man who had just crawled out from beneath the floor, workers ran in all directions. They scurried around and beneath rows of automated conveyor belts carrying bottles just like the ones Jillian had recovered from the warehouse in Riyadh.

  Heavy stainless steel machines filled the plastic bottles with water and some other compound which Harvath assumed had to be the antidote. They were then sent in orderly rows to be capped, labeled, shrink-wrapped, and stacked on enormous pallets, where they were picked up by a forklift operator and moved to a loading area.

  As he was studying the operation, all of a sudden everything around him erupted in a hail of gunfire. Hitting the deck, he saw Ozan Kalachka and the man who would be caliph—Prince Hamal—flanked by two of the meanest-looking, long-bearded, turban-wearing men Harvath had ever seen. With their earth-tone robes and huge machineguns, the bodyguards appeared more suited to the Wild West-style streets of Kabul than a holy city like Mecca.

  Harvath rolled beneath one of the conveyor belts and fired his MP5, sending a shower of sparks along the metal platform where the men were standing. Immediately, they returned fire, and Harvath felt water pouring down on him as the bottles up above were sawn in half.

  Rolling back out into the open, Harvath applied pressure to the trigger of his MP5 and dropped one of the two Taliban twins bracketing Hamal and Kalachka.

  The remaining bodyguard once again returned fire, but this time capped it off with a special twist—a live grenade. As the grenade hit the concrete floor only feet away, Harvath scrambled further beneath the machinery. He crawled in the other direction as fast as his hands and knees would carry him. And then the unthinkable happened—he got stuck.

  NINETY-ONE

  I t took Harvath only a fraction of a second to realize what had happened—the demo bag he had slung over his shoulder had become hung up on a bolt sticking out from one of the legs supporting the conveyor belt above. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t pull it loose, nor could he untangle himself from it. The heavy-duty canvas bag had been meant to take tons of abuse without ever tearing or giving way.

  Harvath knew the grenade was only seconds away from going off, and so he did the only thing he could think of. Bracing his back against the underside of the conveyor belt, he planted his legs and gave one big push. He felt the bolts pop away as the conveyor belt tray sprang loose from its supports and flipped over onto the floor, sending a mountain of water bottles along with it. The demo bag was finally free, but all Harvath could do was hit the deck.

  As he did, the grenade exploded, the upturned conveyor belt and pile of water bottles absorbing most of the blast.

  Raising his MP5, Harvath shook off the effects of the grenade, leapt off the floor, and ran forward shooting. The remaining Taliban twin tried to return fire, but Harvath caught the man just above his eyebrows, killing him instantly. Reflexively, he then turned his weapon on the remaining two targets and focused on the bigger of them—Ozan Kalachka.

  In a move that shouldn’t have surprised Harvath, Kalachka grabbed Hamal, swung him around to use as a shield, and put a gun to the prince’s head.

  “Descendants of the Prophet Muhammad who also have Turkish blood in their veins must be pretty easy to come by,” yelled Harvath as he kept his MP5 trained on the man, who, just like Timothy Rayburn, had used and betrayed him. The urge to take the shot regardless of the consequences was overwhelmingly tempting. He could always tell the Crown Prince someone else had shot his son, but that wasn’t how Harvath operated. He had given his word. Without a laser sight, Harvath decided against pulling the trigger.

  “It would appear we’re at a bit of a crossroads,” yelled Kalachka from the metal observation platform above the bottling plant floor. “For what it’s worth, my offer still stands. What better place for you to convert to Islam than in its holiest of cities?”

  “Thanks, but I’ve already converted. Crown Prince Abdullah gave me a nice little ceremony, but I don’t think it’s for me,” replied Harvath as he maneuvered for a cleaner shot. “Bad clothes and even worse holidays. My answer is going to have to remain no.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” answered Kalachka as he too moved, preventing Harvath from setting up a straight line of fire.

  “I’ll make you a deal, though,” said Harvath. “Give me what I want, and I’ll let you live.”

  Kalachka laughed. “You’ll just let me walk right out of here?”

  “No, I said I would let you live.”

  The Scorpion pretended to think about it a moment and then answered, “I think I’m going to walk out of here anyway. Something tells me that even you don’t have the balls to risk killing a member of the Saudi Royal Family.”

  “You think so?” said Harvath as he tightened the stock of the MP5 against his cheek. “Why don’t you try me?”

  Kalachka took another step to his left and Harvath let loose with a three-round burst that tore chunks out of the wall behind him only inches away from the man’s shoulder. There was a look of abject terror on the face of Prince Hamal, and Kalachka shuffled back to his original position. “Maybe we can come to some sort of arrangement, “He shouted.

  “Like what?” replied Harvath.

  “The Wahhabi leaders are as good as dead anyway. Even if I did provide you with what you are looking for, there’s not enough time to save the house of Saud. Soon, we’ll have three nuclear weapons, and no one will dare move against us.”

  “How can you be so sure Saudi Arabia even has nuclear weapons?”

  “Because I’ve seen them with my own eyes. It’s this country’s best-kept secret. Even America isn’t sure of their existence. That means, even if you wanted to take them out, you wouldn’t know where to find them.”

  “So what’s your deal?” said Harvath, cutting to the chase.

  “I’ll tell you what you need to know about the illness, but only after you’ve let me go.”

  “You need to tell me now. People in America have already begun to come down with it.”

  “That’s ridiculous. This illness has not been sent to the U.S. Not yet, at least. You’re stalling, “He yelled. “Give me your answer. Do we have a deal or not?”

  “Why don’t you ask Hamal about America? He’s the one with the export business. It seems things may have grown a little bit faster than you had anticipated.”

  Jamming his pistol into Hamal’s ear, Kalachka demanded, “Is this true? Did you ship that poison to America?”

  “Yes,” Hamal stammered, “but we shipped the water for the Sunni faithful too.”

  “What do you mean, we?”

  “Faruq. He coordinated it. He said the only chance we stood against the Americans was to attack them at home so we’d be guaranteed they could never move against us.”

  “You fool, that was not what we had planned.”

  “But Faruq said—”

  “Faruq i
s an even bigger idiot than you are.”

  Harvath had managed to creep several more inches to his right and almost had the perfect line of sight when Kalachka yelled, “That’s far enough. No more games.”

  Harvath stood stock-still.

  “Now I know why Faruq was so intent upon cleaning out the warehouse in Riyadh,” said Kalachka.

  “But it was too late.”

  “Maybe, but it’s not too late for these buildings here. Everything you need is under this roof—the illness, the antidote, everything.”

  “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you both then and send Prince Abdullah a condolence card?”

  Kalachka removed a remote detonator from his pocket and replied, “Because while Faruq might be a mediocre intelligence operative, he is a genius when it comes to explosives. He wired this building the same way he did the warehouse in Riyadh—but with three times as much C4. Either you let us go, or we’re all going to Paradise right now, together.”

  Harvath looked at him and didn’t say a word.

  “What will it be, Scot? We can end this and both walk away. Don’t be stupid. Think about it.”

  “I think I’ll take my chances,” replied Harvath as he lowered his weapon two inches and pulled the trigger.

  The rounds tore into Prince Hamal’s kneecaps and sent the prince crumpling onto the grate beneath his feet. In an instant Harvath had the weapon back up, and as he squeezed the trigger one more time, he said, “If you see him, tell Allah Scot Harvath says hello.”

  NINETY-TWO

  A s Kalachka’s lifeless body fell forward over the railing, the remote detonator dropped from his hand and clattered onto the platform next to Prince Hamal, who was clutching his legs and writhing in pain. Death was surely better than what awaited him at the hands of his father. He knew the Crown Prince well enough to know that the only reason Harvath hadn’t killed him was that his father had wanted to do it himself.