by Brad Thor
The good news was that they had caught a break. The satellite team back in the United States had been able to track the mobile phone of the cell member Chase had spoken with. Now all Harvath had to do was position his vehicle with the book near the safe house where Chase could see it and wait for him to signal.
Southwest of Uppsala, in the low-income suburb of Gottsunda, Scot Harvath began to believe the fates were smiling on him. On a dirty street flanked by rows of drab apartment complexes, he found the perfect parking space.
With the book on the dash, he got out of the car, removed two sacks of groceries from the trunk, armed the alarm, and walked away.
The area was so rough, thanks in part to rampant lawlessness by Muslim youths, that even Swedes hired to pilot Google’s “Street View” cars had refused to drive through and map the area. It was yet another in a long and growing list of Europe’s sensitive “no go” areas. While Swedish police still responded to calls, they only did so in great numbers because bricks and Molotov cocktails normally greeted them upon their arrival.
There were still ethnic Swedes to be found in the area, though many of the housing complexes were now filled with a mixture of Arab and Somali faces.
As with most of Uppsala’s poorer suburbs and neighborhoods, the residents had been co-opted by the hard left political parties. It was one of the few tidbits about Gottsunda that Harvath had found helpful. To help him blend in, he had donned a dirty pair of jeans, tennis shoes, a worn jacket, and a T-shirt with an antiestablishment slogan one of the assault team members had found near the university.
From what they had been told, the immigrants tended to stay away from the ethnic Swedes, who blamed a lot of their problems on the “Muslim invaders.” Unless he encountered a group of youths looking to start a fight, Harvath expected to be given a wide berth. His Swedish was limited. The only words he knew were those he had picked up in the SEALs when he had dated a string of SAS flight attendants and earned his call sign, Norseman.
As many people do with foreign languages, he’d learned the bad words first. If anyone did come up to engage him, he could act the part of the surly drunk, toss out a few choice phrases, and keep going. He hoped he wouldn’t even need to do that.
Right in front of the safe house and right on cue, the rip Harvath had placed in the bottom of one of his grocery bags tore the rest of the way open and spilled its contents onto the ground. He swore in Swedish and muttered to himself as he bent over to pick everything up. Stealing the occasional glance at the building, he saw that all of the window shades were drawn tight.
Chase wouldn’t communicate his message until he saw the car parked on the street with the book, so Harvath gathered up his groceries and continued down the block.
At the end of the street he turned the corner and walked three blocks. In a weed-choked parking area sat a large panel truck covered with graffiti. Six serious-looking, extremely fit men in matching blue T-shirts and jeans stood talking. Alongside their truck, they looked like a team of movers, which was exactly what Harvath wanted people to believe.
As he got nearer, Harvath could see that though they appeared casual, their eyes were constantly scanning the area, taking nothing for granted. The Old Man had put the assault team together himself and they were true professionals, loaded for bear and ready for anything.
The team leader was a former U.S. Special Forces soldier who then spent several years with the CIA’s “Special Activities Division” before being transferred up to the paramilitary “Special Operations Group” composed of ex-DevGru SEALS and CAG operators. He was a tall man with a fishhook-shaped scar on his left cheek. His name was Schiller and he was only a year older than Harvath.
Once the plan for raiding the safe house had been hatched, Schiller had been the one to find the truck. Inside were cardboard boxes filled with the assault team’s gear. Posing as a Swedish moving company, they would unload the boxes onto dollies and wheel them into the building. Once inside, they would unpack the weapons, radios, Swedish Security Service uniforms, helmets, and body armor, and suit up.
For a job like this, it was customary to have at least two to three times as many men as they had. Ideally, you’d also have a surveillance team watching the apartment from somewhere close by. One operator would watch the front of the building while another watched the back and a third stayed behind the wheel of the truck. On the perimeter an additional operator would be in charge of communications. Inside, the teams would post men in the stairwells and at the elevator. Finally, there would be the assault team itself, which would be in charge of actually hitting the apartment. That was how it was done on your own turf or in a cooperative assignment with a foreign government. But because the Swedes had no idea that the Americans were operating within their territory, they’d had to remain lean.
As someone who never asked people to do what he wouldn’t do, and as someone who always wanted to be the first through the door, Harvath had wanted to lead the team inside. Schiller, though, had been against it.
Harvath was in charge of the operation and thought about pulling rank, but instead he took a deep breath and stood down. The assaulters were Schiller’s men. There could be almost a telepathic bond on assault teams. They instinctively knew where each other would be and what each would do at every minute. Harvath understood not to take it personally. He hadn’t trained with them. He couldn’t blame Schiller or his assaulters for not wanting to compromise the integrity of their team.
Without Riley, they numbered seven, total. Schiller wanted Harvath to stay outside and watch the rear of the building while one of his assaulters stayed with the truck in front. The apartment complex backed up to a large wooded area where a cell member could disappear quickly.
It was a good idea, but it wasn’t perfect. None of Schiller’s men spoke Swedish-not even any of the bad words. Sitting in the truck might result in some sort of interaction with someone from the neighborhood. Therefore, this time Harvath asserted his authority and stated that he’d remain in front with the truck while one of Schiller’s men watched the back and coordinated the radio communications.
Schiller agreed and threw Harvath an extra blue T-shirt. As Harvath changed, Schiller reviewed the rest of the assignments. He would be leading three of the assaulters into the apartment, while a fifth would stay in the hall and cover their six so no one could hit the team from behind.
All of the weapons and radios had been checked before the team had left their temporary apartment in Uppsala. In a sports bag in the cab of the truck was a suppressed MP7 for Harvath along with a radio and a black plate carrier vest emblazoned with the word Sakerhetspolisen across the front and back.
Schiller also handed him a blue baseball cap, since he’d already walked right past the safe house once. To sit outside in the truck, Harvath needed to do everything he could to make sure that he wasn’t recognized. The man had raised a good point. That also meant that until they were ready to launch their operation, Harvath couldn’t go anywhere near the safe house again. Someone else was going to have to look to see if Chase had raised his signal. In fact, they were probably going to have to take turns. Once again, Harvath wished that Riley was with them.
Each of the assaulters had brought a change of clothes, so Harvath put together a surveillance roster-who would go, when he would go, and what his ruse would be while passing the safe house so that none of them would draw undue attention.
They had an additional vehicle parked a block away from the truck, and Harvath decided they would use it as well, but sparingly. If any of the members of the cell saw the same vehicle go by twice, especially one that wasn’t a regular in the neighborhood, they might get spooked and do something stupid.
With all the rotations decided upon, all they could do was wait. The ball was now in Chase’s court.
CHAPTER 20
Chase had zeroed in on the cell leader the moment he’d been shown into the apartment. Mustafa Karami was a slight man who looked much older than the other me
mbers. He sported a patchy beard, a slim nose, and a pair of deeply set, dark eyes.
He radiated a controlled, simmering anger that seemed ready to erupt at any moment. He was different from most of the jihadists Chase had come across. Not unique, just different. Most of them were not very bright, and they lacked self-control. That wasn’t Karami, though. He was the picture of self-control. He was also very intelligent. Chase could tell that just from one look at his face. That’s what made him different.
As the man embraced and kissed him on both cheeks, Chase sensed something else. This was a man who would slash your throat at a moment’s notice if he felt it necessary. He would feel no remorse about it either. He’d probably sit there and drink his chai as he watched you bleed out on the floor. Between Karami and Sabah, his number two, Chase had a lot to be concerned about.
The other cell members in the apartment were like the two men who had picked him up at the soccer field and had taken him to the garage. They were either muscle or simply jihadist cannon fodder. None of them were exceptionally intelligent nor were they particularly talented. He doubted they’d be of any intelligence value whatsoever.
After welcoming him, Karami sat Chase down and asked the huge man named Sabah to fetch tea. He made small talk as was customary and when Sabah returned with a tray, he poured the tea and offered Chase a snack. There were bowls of dates, figs, and nuts. Chase thanked him and helped himself.
“Your uncle was a wonderful soldier of Allah. He is in Paradise now.”
“Masha’Allah,” Chase replied. God has willed it.
“It was your uncle’s desire that if anything happened to him, we take care of you.”
Chase shrugged and took a sip of his tea. It was important that he maintain his aloof, disinterested hacker attitude.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
Karami was testing him as Sabah had. The last time Chase had seen Aazim Aleem was when pieces of him had been blown all over a Yemeni sidewalk, but he couldn’t exactly share that. He also couldn’t exactly share how he and Aazim had first met.
Chase had spent three years infiltrating Aazim Aleem’s terrorist network. He had worked his way right into a position next to a man named Marwan Jarrah, who was helping coordinate Aazim’s attack plans for the United States. Then Harvath showed up, Jarrah was gunned down, and Aazim disappeared, but not before several attacks in Chicago were launched and scores of people were killed.
These attacks had come on the heels of a wave of attacks in Europe targeting American tourists. Aazim had built a very sophisticated network. What bothered the CIA was that many of his American cells were believed to still be in place. Nobody knew who they were, much less where they were hiding and what they had planned.
Chase had met with Aazim only twice. He was the only American operative to have ever done so. The first time had been brief and had taken place while Chase and Jarrah were traveling through Pakistan. The second meeting had happened in Chicago and had been much more substantive. Chase had finally put another piece of the puzzle in place as he discovered that Jarrah was working for Aazim, who controlled the network.
The meeting had taken place in Jarrah’s office and Chase so impressed Aazim that the terrorist mastermind invited him to help execute a nationwide string of attacks beyond what was planned for Chicago. These attacks, it was alleged, would cause airplanes to rain from the sky, radiation and plague to infect American citizens, and multiple other horrors. Aazim despised America and his goal was for it to know terror like it had never known terror before.
And as that prediction began to unfold, a Mumbai-style siege was launched against three commuter train stations in Chicago and many innocent civilians had been killed.
Jarrah had explained to Chase that Aazim had come to Chicago to check on their final preparations. From there he was going to Los Angeles for the next attack, and he wanted Chase to handle an attack planned for New York City.
When one of the Chicago train station plots was interrupted and Jarrah was murdered, the L.A. and New York attacks never materialized. According to chatter, Aazim had fled the United States. That’s when Chase had been charged with hunting him down.
The hunt had led him to Yemen, but Aazim had proven elusive, at least for the CIA. Harvath, somehow, had much better luck. He not only located the terrorist mastermind, he managed to capture him and stuff him in his trunk.
Chase had just been given the keys to Harvath’s car when it was struck by an RPG and Aazim was incinerated.
The reason the CIA had allowed Chase to join Harvath’s current Uppsala operation was that they were bound and determined to uncover the remainder of Aazim’s network, both within the United States and, if possible, the rest of the world.
The powers that be back at Langley didn’t much care for Harvath’s cowboy reputation. They cared even less for Harvath’s boss, Reed Carlton, but they had little choice but to cooperate.
Chase had invested years of his life in infiltrating Aazim’s network. He knew more about it than anyone else in the intelligence world, and he made it crystal clear to Agency brass that if they didn’t sign off on his joining Harvath’s op, he would quit and sign up with the Carlton Group. Either way, he would finish the job he had started.
Chase was a virtual encyclopedia of Aazim Aleem information. British by birth, the terrorist had been a fat man in his late sixties with a long gray beard when he had been shredded in Yemen. But his girth and facial hair were not his most distinguishing features.
That honor belonged to the two stainless steel hooks that he had where his hands should have been. He had traveled to Afghanistan in the eighties to fight in the jihad against the Soviets, and legend had it that Aazim had lost his hands attempting to defuse a land mine near a school. The story was pure propaganda. The jihadist was a bomb maker and had lost them in a premature detonation.
He had been an adept Islamic scholar who had studied at Egypt’s prestigious hotbed of Muslim extremism, Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Known only as the “Mufti of Jihad,” his anonymous writings and audio sermons on violent jihad were famous throughout the Muslim world. Until Chase, no Western intelligence service had ever been able to uncover the Mufti of Jihad’s true identity. Aazim had traveled extensively promoting war against the infidels and the West while collecting a full disability pension back in the United Kingdom.
Since no one really knew who he was until Chase discovered him, the man had traveled freely under his real name. Once he disappeared, Chase went back and studied that travel extensively. It wasn’t hard to put together a trail of tickets and every time his U.K. passport had been scanned. It was how he was able to answer Karami’s question. “I saw him about three months ago,” he replied. “Before he left for Chicago.”
“And who was he meeting in Chicago?” asked the leader of the Uppsala cell.
“Marwan Jarrah.”
“And then?”
“And then,” replied Chase, “New York and Los Angeles, but he left for Yemen and I never saw him again.”
Karami studied the young man’s face. There was no way he could know these things unless he was exactly who he said he was. Nevertheless, Sabah distrusted the newcomer, and Sabah had excellent instincts. “Tell me about the Sheikh. The Sheikh from Qatar.”
Sabah seemed interested in this question and leaned forward.
Chase looked at both men. “What Sheikh?”
“Surely,” stated the cell leader, “your uncle confided in you enough to mention the Sheikh.”
“Apparently not completely. He never mentioned any Sheikh.”
“You never questioned where the funding came from?”
“Why would I care? I’m an IT person,” replied Chase. “I had nothing to do with his finances.”
Chase’s mind was moving like a Rubik’s Cube, trying to align the information so that the entire puzzle fell into place. He had never heard about any Sheikh from Qatar. This was completely new to him.
Marwan Jarrah had bee
n near the top of the organization’s pyramid, but Chase had always known he was taking his orders from someone above him. That someone had turned out to be Aazim Aleem. The next question was, who had been giving Aazim orders? Was he the ultimate string-puller, or was there someone else? And what was the Uppsala cell’s connection to all of this?
At least Harvath had played it smart. Had he thrown a hood over the nephew’s head and dragged him off to some black site in Eastern Europe for interrogation the minute they’d uncovered him, instead of surveilling him, the United States might not ever have learned about the Uppsala cell. It had come as a complete surprise even to the real Mansoor Aleem. His uncle Aazim had been smart. The man kept his network compartmentalized. He had to. It was like bulkheads. If one was compromised, it didn’t have to mean the entire ship was going down.
Which brought Chase back to the Uppsala cell. Why had Aazim set it up? What was its purpose? Was it an insurance policy of sorts, a guarantee that if he was taken out, their mission would continue? If so, did that mean he had entrusted them with the knowledge of his nephew? There were so many pieces of the puzzle missing.
As Chase spun the blocks of information in his mind, Karami asked him another question. It put him on edge, because it showed the cell leader was not fully convinced he was who he said he was. “Tell me about your uncle’s impairment.”
“What impairment?” Chase replied. “His hands?”
Karami said nothing. His face was impassive, inscrutable.
“He lost them in Afghanistan,” Chase continued. His gaze was locked on Karami. Just out of his field of view, he could feel Sabah’s eyes burning a hole right through him.
“How did he lose them?” asked the cell leader.
