by Brad Thor
Right now, though, they had to assemble a response to ISIS. America’s previous attack had dominated global headlines for the last seventy-two hours. The phone at the White House was still ringing off the hook from world leaders.
But in the blink of an eye, the United States had lost the propaganda initiative. ISIS had been able to strike the White House itself. It was an amazing coup.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff had been assembled at the Pentagon. A secure videoconference link connected them with the bunker.
Porter addressed the Chairman. “Your thoughts regarding a response, General?”
The man tapped his pencil onto the pad of paper in front of him. “My guess is the attack on the White House was in the works before we hit them with Operation Iron Fury.”
“Agreed.”
“And all the intel we’re getting here says that we kneecapped them pretty good. We can put together any kind of response you ask for, Mr. President. But what we’d need to know is what you’re looking for.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning,” the General replied, “do you want something that’s proportional? Or disproportional?”
It was a fair question, and one that Porter had already been thinking about. “Let’s say we wanted to deliver an equally symbolic message. What would it take to blow the front doors of ISIS headquarters right off their hinges?”
“Well, for starters, we’d actually have to find their headquarters,” said the General.
“And if we can do that?” asked the President.
“If you can do that, we’ll give you the most unbelievably symbolic response you’ve ever seen.”
CHAPTER 45
MALTA
You really messed him up,” Vella said as Harvath joined him in his office. “His knee is shattered. He’s probably going to walk with a limp for the rest of his life.”
Harvath picked up the scan and looked at it. “Do you offer dental exams too?”
“We work up each one that comes through. We don’t want any unforeseen medical conditions tanking an interrogation.”
Despite some of its stomach-churning practices, the Solarium was highly scientific. Harvath understood the need to give prisoners work-ups. It not only helped identify potential problems but also provided baselines, which allowed them to identify when techniques were working.
“Did Malevsky give you anything useful?” Harvath asked.
“A couple of things,” Vella replied. “Mostly background, but I think it could be helpful. In the meantime, I need updated proof of life. Can you get your contact to take photos?” Consulting his notes, he added, “He wants a picture of each girl in the kitchen near her favorite appliance.”
“What does that mean?”
“He says the girls will know.”
Harvath removed his phone to text Alexandra. “What’s the password for your Wi-Fi?”
Vella gave it to him, Harvath entered it into his phone, and sent the message. “I’ll let you know as soon as I get something back from her. Now, what about Sergun?”
Vella picked up a remote and clicked on one of the TVs hanging on the wall. A hooded figure sat with his feet chained to the floor and his wrists cuffed to a track that ran down the center of a stainless steel table.
“What are you waiting for?” Harvath asked.
The interrogator opened a drawer in his desk, removed what looked like a small pill bottle, and handed it to Harvath. “Open it.”
The moment Harvath did, he regretted it. He only caught a small whiff of what was inside, but it was enough to cause his chest to tighten and his pulse to race.
Replacing the cap, he handed it back to Vella. “That’s awful.”
“Now you know what fear smells like.”
Harvath shook his head to get the lingering odor out of his nostrils. “What are you talking about? What is that stuff?”
“It’s a synthetic.”
“Synthetic what?”
Vella thought for a moment and replied, “Certain species are capable of excreting chemical factors which can trigger social responses.”
“Pheromones,” Harvath stated.
“Precisely. And when these chemical factors are released, they impact the behavior of the receiving individual. There are many different kinds of pheromones in the animal world that affect behavior and physiology. There are alarm pheromones, sex pheromones, and even fear pheromones.
“This last pheromone is particularly interesting, especially as it relates to human beings, both in groups, as well as in individuals. Essentially, what we have learned is that fear can be chemically induced. And it can be done so via smell.”
These guys were way too into their work. They were always developing new interrogation techniques, ways to break people and get them to comply.
“Let me guess,” said Harvath. “You’re pumping the interrogation room full of it right now.”
“Are you kidding me?” Vella replied. “I wouldn’t be able to work in there if I did.”
“So how are you introducing it?”
Vella walked over to the monitor and pointed to the hood Sergun was wearing. “See this part here? Right around his nose and mouth?”
Harvath looked. The fabric appeared darker. “What about it?”
“That’s actually a pocket. We placed pieces of fabric inside, soaked with the synthetic pheromone.”
“So he’s breathing it.”
Vella nodded.
“Does that actually work?” Harvath asked.
“We’ll see.”
• • •
Fifteen minutes later, Vella turned up the volume on the monitor and excused himself. Harvath remained behind in the office to watch.
Moments later, he heard the heavy bolt on the interrogation room door being pulled back and then the squeal of hinges as it was opened.
One of the guards closed and locked the door behind him after Vella had entered.
It was interesting for Harvath to watch how someone else conducted an interrogation. Normally, he was the one doing it. He didn’t usually get to observe other people work.
Vella took his time. He moved quietly to the far corner of the room, leaned back against the wall, and watched his prisoner.
By now, the earmuffs and the blindfold would have been removed from Sergun. The only deprivation he was suffering was due to his restraints and the hood over his head.
During his medical workup, adhesive sensors had been placed at different points on his skin. Now, somewhere in the Solarium, a tech had hit a button and the man’s vital signs could be seen across the bottom of the TV monitor.
Sergun’s heart rate had gone up since the door had opened and Vella had entered the room. He was keenly aware of the man’s presence. Vella, though, did nothing. He remained in the corner, leaning against the wall, watching.
Harvath could only imagine what was going through Sergun’s mind at the moment. Most likely, he was trying to remember all of his training. Deny, deny, deny and launch counteraccusations. That’s what all good spies were taught.
After five more minutes, Vella approached. He stood very close, almost on top of him. Harvath leaned forward to figure out what he was doing. Then Vella carefully removed the hood and stepped away.
The fifty-eight-year-old Sergun was a good forty pounds overweight. His pasty white face was round and puffy. His jowls shook as his eyes adjusted to the light and he twisted his head left, and then right. His gray hair was cut in a buzz cut, military-style.
“I understand that you speak English,” said Vella.
As his eyes focused, they came to rest on his interrogator and he nodded.
“Good,” Vella continued. “Do you know where you are?”
Sergun shook his head.
“It has many names. Some have compared it to Dante’s seventh
circle, where the violent are bathed in a boiling river of blood and fire. Others, though, have compared it to Paradise. A place where their prayers are finally answered. Where they find release.”
The Russian remained still. His face was stony and impassive. His eyes, though, told a different story. Harvath could see it even on the CCTV footage. And if he could see it, that meant Vella did too.
“What would you like to accomplish here?” Vella asked.
It was a bizarre question, almost better suited for a job interview or a self-help seminar.
Vella moved back to his corner of the room, leaned back against the wall, and waited. He was in no hurry.
Harvath glanced back at the graphic with Sergun’s vitals. His heart rate had increased.
Sergun eventually summoned the will to speak. “What do you want?” he asked.
Vella smiled. “I want you to answer for your sins.”
“I have no sins.”
The interrogator’s smile never wavered. “We all have sins, Viktor. We all must atone. I’m here to help you.”
“You are not here to help me,” the Russian insisted. He was growing more agitated. His voice cracked as his vitals climbed. “Let me go. I want to leave.”
“Everyone wants to leave.”
“Let me go!”
Harvath watched the monitor as the man became more distraught. He could see the whites of his eyes, wide with fear. The pheromone was working.
Vella moved off the wall and reached for a spare chair. Drawing it gently over, he sat down next to the prisoner. “I understand that in Russia, you read Dante. Do you recall The Inferno?”
Sergun began to tremble.
“Who was in the ninth circle, Viktor?”
“The devil,” he whispered. “Lucifer.”
“That’s right. You’re with the devil now. And no one knows you’re here. No one is coming to save you,” said Vella. “You can scream. You can cry out. But only I will hear you.”
Removing a pair of pliers, he then ordered, “Spread your fingers.”
The stainless steel table Sergun was shackled to was like a medieval rack. The track down the center was mechanical.
When the Russian refused to comply, Vella depressed a button that pulled his wrists forward while his ankles remained chained to the floor.
He began screaming almost immediately.
• • •
Twenty minutes later, the Russian had been broken. Vella looked up at the interrogation room’s camera in a subtle acknowledgment of Harvath.
Then, returning his gaze to Sergun, he said, “Tell me about the GRU, Viktor. Let me help you leave. Let me help you go home.”
CHAPTER 46
Harvath used the Solarium’s SCIF, a small secured room for transmitting top-secret information, to provide a full report to Washington. He had been in there for hours.
No one wanted to believe it. Harvath didn’t want to believe it. But once the shock of Sergun’s revelations began to wear off, they started discussing what their response should be.
There were many serious decisions to be made. Not the least of which was whether the United States should declare war on Russia.
The President wanted to confer privately with his advisers. It was decided that everyone would reconvene in an hour.
Stepping out of the SCIF, Harvath saw Vella and flagged him over.
“How’d it go?” the interrogator asked.
Harvath needed a case of water and a fistful of aspirin. Pinching the bridge of his nose to relieve his headache, he replied, “Not well.”
Vella had extracted a stunning confession from Sergun. Russia not only had a mole deep inside American intelligence, but had also orchestrated the attack on the SAD team in Anbar, the assassination of the Secretary of Defense, and the suicide bombing at the White House.
All of the attacks had been designed to draw America into an all-out ground war with ISIS. Russia had been playing a media relations game—pretending not to be fully engaged in Syria, when the truth was they absolutely were. They needed ISIS defeated, but they couldn’t do it on their own.
There were two major factors at stake for Russia. One foreign. One domestic.
Russia’s only deep, warm-water port was located in the Syrian coastal city of Tartus. From this Mediterranean facility, Russia could project its naval power anywhere in the world.
All of its other main ports were either ice-locked for large portions of the year, or landlocked, which required Russian naval vessels to pass through straits controlled by other countries.
If ISIS took over Syria, there was no telling what would happen to the treaty allowing the Russian naval facility at Tartus and their air base north of there. It was in Russia’s best interest that the status quo be maintained.
But to do that, Russia had to focus most of its energy on defeating the CIA-backed rebels trying to topple the current government. It couldn’t afford to open up a second front against ISIS. The United States, though, could.
All America needed was a strong enough push. If it were repeatedly and dramatically humiliated, it would have no other choice but to act.
Even America’s war-weary citizens would eventually call for something to be done. Russia was certain of it.
The attack on the White House was the icing on the cake. It would make for a dramatic ISIS propaganda video, but its real mission was to be an affront to America’s patriotic sense of honor—a provocation that could absolutely not be ignored.
Russia’s other reason for wanting ISIS destroyed was domestic. The greatest population of non-Arabs traveling to Iraq and Syria to fight for ISIS were Russian speakers.
They came in the thousands from Russian satellites like Chechnya and Ingushetia, Dagestan, and Abkhazia.
Fighting with ISIS, they gained extensive, hard-core combat experience. They learned how to build IEDs, as well as nuclear, biological, and chemical bombs.
Eventually, many would return home to their unstable regions. They would train others, foment unrest, and launch revolutions. And as soon as one revolution started, others would follow. Russia would be overwhelmed, unable to respond. It was a nightmare scenario. One for which they could see only a single exit—getting the United States involved.
It was stupid, outrageous, dangerous, deadly, and unquestionably a direct act of war. Nobody during Harvath’s secure teleconference inside the SCIF had debated that. What they had debated was the appropriate response.
As far as Harvath was concerned, the only appropriate response was to hit the Russians so hard that they never attempted anything like it ever again. But that’s what America thought it had done a decade ago, when small, man-portable nukes had been discovered secreted across the United States. The message, though, didn’t appear to have gotten through. America was going to have to come up with something bigger.
The problem at the moment was figuring out how far up the chain the plot went. Was it limited to just the GRU? Or had it been sanctioned at the very top, from inside the Kremlin?
There was only one way Harvath could see for them to figure that out. And he wanted to be the one to do it. But before he did, he wanted to know how Vella had been able to break Sergun so quickly and so thoroughly.
“Your sense of smell is able to go straight to the part of the brain that stores memories,” Vella explained. “It can also impact your mood and performance and does so without asking your conscious mind for permission.
“Essentially what we’ve created is a chemical Trojan horse. It gets us into the brain, specifically to the amygdala, where fear memories are stored and potential threats are determined.
“It short-circuits the ‘fight’ portion of the fight-or-flight mechanism. All the patient cares about is surviving. They become highly cooperative, malleable.”
“Why were you talking about Dante?” Harvath
asked.
“When I interrogated Malevsky, he mentioned that Sergun liked to brag about how smart he was—the kinds of books he read. He spoke a lot about Dante, so I used that.”
“Used it how?”
Vella knew Harvath was highly intelligent. He also knew that science could be boring and so used the simplest analogy he could think of. “Fear is like an icepick,” he said. “The deeper I can get it, the more acute the sensation. If I can work with images that are already in the subject’s mind, it helps speed things up. That’s why I try to gather as much background as possible.”
“Would it work on a stranger?”
“I suppose,” Vella said. “But it’s probably going to take longer.”
Harvath thanked him and headed for the stairwell. He wanted to get some fresh air before he had to return to the SCIF.
A plan was beginning to take shape in his mind and he hoped taking a short walk around the property might help the rest of the pieces fall into place.
CHAPTER 47
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
President Porter waited until everyone else had left the Situation Room and then had Reed Carlton escorted down from upstairs. CIA Director McGee and Deputy Director Ryan were the only people who had been asked to remain behind.
When they were all seated at the conference table, the President asked, “So what does everyone think?”
Carlton spoke first. “I think it’s doable. Harvath has operated multiple times in Syria.”
“While augmented by Peshmerga fighters,” Porter clarified.
“Yes, sir. That’s correct.”
“So he wasn’t one hundred percent on his own.”
“No, sir.”
“The Agency has a pretty reliable network of locals,” McGee offered. “We can plug him in.”
The President looked at him. “What does pretty reliable mean?”
“For Syria it means the best you’re going to get.”
